Streaked shearwaters normally fly so low they practically skim the surface of the sea, hence the name, and at low speed. It might have been surprising to track one at an altitude of 4,700 metres at speeds of up to 105mph (169km/h) – except this was during a typhoon that the bird was riding out.
A researcher at Tohoku University has detailed the unusual flight in a paper in the journal Ecology. Kozue Shiomi, who used GPS trackers to follow birds from a small island near Tokyo, observed that when the area was struck by Typhoon Faxai, with wind speeds of more than 120mph, most of them avoided the bad weather.
One male soared to high altitude and was carried over mainland Japan, looping around five times before the typhoon finally departed.
Shiomi does not know if this extreme flight was deliberate or accidental. Frigate birds have been observed ascending to high altitude to avoid storms but this would be unusual for shearwaters, which generally stay close to the sea surface.
In fact, the shearwater’s usual flying technique exploits differences in wind speed at very low altitudes to soar for long periods.
The study should help understand the response of seabirds to powerful storms, which are likely to become increasingly common as sea temperatures rise.
