January 11th, 2010 | By Nora Sawyer | Filed in Arctic Animals, IN THE NEWS, SCIENCE

Recent research indicates that the Arctic tern, which breeds in the Arctic in the summertime before flying south to ‘winter’ in the Antarctic during the southern hemisphere’s summer months, flies further than previously believed.

In previous years, scientists had only been able to track individual sea birds as far as the coast of South Africa before losing track of them, making it impossible to determine how far an individual bird or flock trekked in the course of a year.

An article published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America describes how a team of researchers led by Dr. Carsten Egevang of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources in Nuuk used miniature geolocators to track eleven terns from colonies in Iceland and Greenland as they made their annual migration. The new data showed that some of the birds flew more than 50,000 miles in one year, taking a more meandering route than scientists had suspected.

Over the course of one bird’s 34-year life span, this commute adds up to a total of 2.4 million km , the equivalent of three journeys to the moon and back.

50,000-mile round trip makes Arctic tern the ultimate commuter – Times Online .

Tags: antarctica, arctic, arctic tern, greenland, iceland, tern commute