Episode

The Bird That Flew 7,000 Miles Without Landing

In 2007 a bar-tailed godwit called E7 flew from Alaska to New Zealand nonstop: 11,680 km in about eight days, tracked by satellite.

Updated 2026-10-18

Case Files · Episode 1 · 15:55. Long-form episode; the video player arrives at public launch.

What the episode is about

In 2007 a bar-tailed godwit the scientists called E7 flew from Alaska to New Zealand without landing once: 11,680 kilometres in about eight days, tracked the whole way by satellite. Every date and distance comes from the scientists' own reports.

Key facts

• E7 flew 11,680 km nonstop in about 8.1 days (Gill et al., 2009).
• Sixteen godwits were fitted with satellite tags at Miranda, New Zealand.
• Where reports disagree on a date, the episode uses the peer-reviewed paper and says so.

Further reading

• Breeding males brick-red: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Birds of the World (Bar-tailed Godwit)

Scenes are painted and dramatized from the sources below. Where accounts disagree, the episode says so.

More from Case Files

• The Dog Who Walked 2,500 Miles Home
• She Was Banded in 1956. She's Still Coming Back.
• This Dog Waited at a Train Station for Almost 10 Years

Scenes are painted and dramatized from published research; animal-sense views are illustrations, not measurements.