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Frigatebird Flies 2,500 Miles to Feed Chick

A Christmas Island frigate bird named Lydia recently made a 26-day journey of about 2,500 miles in search of food for her baby.

The trip, tracked with a global positioning device by scientists at Christmas Island National Park, the birds' only known breeding ground, is by far the longest known nonstop journey by one of these critically endangered seabirds.

Previously, the black-and-white scavengers with distinctive pink beaks and wingspans of up to 8 feet were known only to fly a few hundred miles from their nesting sites, staying away for just a few days at a time, officials said.

The thing that really surprised scientists was that it was a long, nonstop journey, and that she crossed overland over volcanoes.

Lydia's trip started October 18 from Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean about 310 miles south of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, and 1,600 miles northwest of Perth, in western Australia.

Leaving a baby chick in the care of her partner, Lydia headed south over open waters, probably to steal fish from other seabirds, a common habit among frigate birds.

She then circled back on October 26 and flew between Indonesia's Java and Sumatra islands. From there, she headed across Borneo island on November 9 before flying back over Java and returning on November 18 to her nesting site.

Though the journey was a record for a frigate bird, it falls short of the top trip among birds monitored by scientists — a 46-day round-the-world trek by a gray-headed albatross, according to Birdlife International, a Britain-based conservation group that keeps track of threatened species.

Lydia is one of the first four Christmas Island frigate birds to be fitted with a satellite tracking device. Funded by a grant from the American Bird Conservancy, the devices, metal boxes about 2.5 inches long and 1 inch wide with an eight-inch antenna, are attached by harnesses.

The devices give scientists much needed data on the flight paths and feeding patterns of frigate birds. Previously, most data came courtesy of bird watchers, who have reported frigate birds turning up mostly in Asia, but as far away as Kenya in east Africa.

Officials hope the new satellite data will help improve conservation efforts.

The distance Lydia traveled raises some serious questions about efforts to stem the decline of the birds, whose numbers have fallen by 10 percent over the past 20 years. It raises the suspicion that fish resources around Christmas Island are not currently adequate. That might explain the slow and gradual decline of the bird. Lydia's route also raised concerns, because it covered industrial areas, mining sites, and waters popular with commercial fishing fleets.