Every year hundreds of millions of birds from massive storks and geese down to the tiniest hummingbird take to the wing on a journey into the unknown. The Arctic tern makes an annual pilgrimage from the Arctic Circle to the edge of the Antarctic pack ice and back again. And last year a ruddy turnstone (a dumpy shorebird about half the size of a chicken) was tracked on a 27,000 km round trip from Australia to Siberia and Alaska, at times flying for six days non-stop across the oceans.
This last weekend on World Migratory Bird Day (9 May), people gathered around the globe to celebrate the wonder of bird migration. Few would have had parrots in their thoughts, but here in Australia we have the world's only two long-distance migratory parrots.
BOTH THE SWIFT PARROT and the orange-bellied parrot breed in Tasmania in the summer and then make their way across the treacherous waters of Bass Strait to spend winter on the mainland. Avoiding a chilly Tasmanian winter might seem like a good survival strategy, but it is fraught with danger. Along the way the birds must face the potential of bad weather blowing them off course, or, after arriving at their destination exhausted and starving, finding poor conditions and little food.
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