Bar-tailed godwits migrate from Alaska to New Zealand in a single 7,000-mile flight, traveling day and night for seven to nine days—the longest recorded nonstop migratory flight. In terms of flying distance, the Arctic tern takes all, circling the world in orbit with the seasons. The bird flies from its breeding grounds in Greenland and Iceland to its wintering grounds in Antarctica—a round trip of almost 44,000 miles, the longest migration ever recorded. Over the thirty years of its life, a tern may fly about 1.5 million miles, the equivalent of three trips to the moon and back.
