You might know the short-tailed shearwater and sable shearwater by the common name “muttonbirds”. These two species of seabird breed on islands off southeastern Australia. Both undertake a breathtaking two-week, non-stop flight across the Pacific to the Bering Sea, more than 10,000 km away near Alaska and Russia. Here, they spend the northern summer.
Shearwaters have to survive often-ferocious conditions. Researchers using tracking technology found a shearwater flying inside the eye of a hurricane for 11 hours at an altitude of 4,700 m and winds exceeding 200 km/hr. The bird lived.
