(photo courtesy of Phil Battley, from Plosbiology Creative commons licensing)

From the “Incredible creation” files, satellite tracking tags on migratory birds have now demonstrated a shattered record for long-distance migration.

Known migration patterns are already amazing, what with examples like the hummingbird crossing the Gulf of Mexico in one flight, the American Golden Plovers flying 4,000 kms between Nova Scotia and South America, and the Red Knots flying 4,800 kms between the Wadden sea and Taymyr.

The hummingbird takes between 18 and 24 hours to fly across the Gulf of Mexico (depending on weather) – let’s say it’s an average of 20 hours.  At an average of 40 beats per second, that’s 2,880,000 wing beats, non-stop!

But all of this is nothing.  With the aid of ultra-small satellite tracking tags on the Alaskan bar-tailed godwit, a new record has been set.

Are you sitting down?

We now know that the godwit flies from Alaska to Australia in one, 8-day, 11,000 km, non-stop flight.

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000362

An extended-range 747 jumbo jet can fly ~14,000 kms, whereas the new double-decker airbus 380 (shown below) can fly around 15,000 kms.

Such aircraft require a lot of careful engineering just for the guidance systems, let alone flight control, etc…  No one would make the preposterous suggestion that these aircraft were not designed.  And yet the godwit blows the doors off the aircraft in efficiency, energy consumption, internal guidance system, etc…  In fact, a couple of the godwits that were originally tagged didn’t make it to New Zealand because the tags messed up the design of the bird!  The satellite tags had to be re-engineered and surgically implanted so as not to interfere with the flight of the bird.

All throughout the Plos article, you can see the necessary nod to evolutionism that must be made in any scientific publication (lest you be barred from being a “real scientist”), and yet the authors are stymied and can’t help but use the word “design:”

They also can’t figure out how on earth all of this could have evolved – or why for that matter.

“How Did Such Long-Distance Migration Evolve?”

” It is unlikely that naïve short distance migratory birds accidentally reached

New Zealand to establish this migration route…”

Well, the reason they can’t figure out how or why such a system evolved is because the godwit was incredibly designed.

“CrEvo News Bites” are short commentaries from Ian Juby on current events relating to creation and evolution.  You can subscribe by visiting his blog at: https://ianjuby.org/newsletter.  He has many informative hours of video available for free viewing on line, including his exhaustive, 12-hour “Complete Creation” video series – a veritable video encyclopedia.  http://completecreation.orghttp://youtube.com/wazooloo