The Arctic Tern's 44,000-Mile Migration

Each year since 2009, a single Arctic tern tagged in Greenland has traced a 44,000-mile route-farther than the distance around Earth-without ever stopping for the winter. That path starts above the Arctic Circle, where daylight can last for months, but the real question is how something built for flight, not endurance, manages an unbroken migration all the way to Antarctica. With a wingspan shorter than a loaf of bread, the Greenland tern slips between ocean storms, riding wind currents for up to 1,000 miles at a stretch without landing. The number that shatters records isn’t the miles alone-it’s that by the time just one Greenland tern turns thirty years old, it has flown more than 1.3 million miles, or the distance to the Moon and back almost three times.