OCEAN · FIELD GUIDE
The Flight of E7 the Godwit — The Longest Non-Stop Flight Ever Recorded
Could a bird really cross the entire Pacific Ocean in one go — no island stops, no resting on the water, no meals for over a week? For years scientists argued about it. In 2007 a single tagged shorebird settled the question by simply doing it, flying farther without stopping than any animal ever recorded. Her name was E7, and her dot crossing an empty ocean made her the most famous bird in the world.
A question scientists could not answer
Every year, tens of thousands of bar-tailed godwits vanish from New Zealand in autumn and reappear in Alaska to breed. The puzzle was the way back. Did they hug the Asian coast and island-hop south — or did they strike out straight across the central Pacific, the largest stretch of open water on Earth, in a single flight no land bird was thought capable of?
The evidence had always been circumstantial: departure dates, arrival dates, and how much fat a bird carried. To settle it, scientists needed to follow one bird the whole way. In February 2007, a team led by the U.S. Geological Survey and Massey University caught godwits in New Zealand and gave a few of them tiny surgically-implanted satellite transmitters. One of those birds carried the leg code E7.
Across the whole Pacific, without stopping
On 29 August 2007, after a summer fattening up on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska — nearly doubling her body weight and shrinking her own gut to save grams — E7 lifted off and turned out over the open ocean. Rather than head for the Asian coast, she pointed south toward empty water.
Three days later she was still flying, passing about 400 miles west of Honolulu — the only land for thousands of kilometres. A couple of days after that she crossed the international dateline, north-north-east of Fiji. Her tag kept pinging her position and ground speed to satellites high overhead, proving she never once came down. She flapped almost the entire way, holding around 56 km/h, riding tailwinds across a quarter of the planet.
The far side of the sea
On the evening of 7 September 2007 — about 8.1 days and 11,680 km after leaving Alaska — E7 touched down at the mouth of the Piako River on the Firth of Thames, only a few miles from the mudflats where she had been caught seven months earlier.
It was the longest non-stop flight ever recorded for any bird, and the longest journey of any animal made without pausing to feed. Her transmitter, expected to die long before, had survived just long enough to write the whole flight into the record.
Why E7 mattered
E7's crossing was more than a record. It changed how scientists think about oceans and migration:
- The ocean as a corridor, not a barrier. Her flight showed that the open Pacific can be a wind-assisted fast lane — relatively free of predators and disease — rather than an impassable gap, for a bird built to cross it.
- A mystery settled. She gave direct proof that Alaskan godwits make the southward crossing in one unbroken haul, doubling the previous known limit for non-stop flight.
- A famous individual. Her dot moving across an empty ocean captured the public imagination worldwide, and made a small shorebird one of the best-known wild animals on the planet.
That is why a single bird's flight is worth drawing on a map. E7 turned a decades-old argument into one clean, unbroken line across the Pacific — and showed just how far a living thing can go without ever coming down.
See it on the map
Switch on the Animal Journeys layer on the Ocean canvas to follow E7's flight yourself. The chevrons show her direction; the solid line is the non-stop crossing her tag recorded, and each glowing waypoint opens the story of that stage — from the day she left Alaska to the evening she reached New Zealand. She joins Nicole the great white, Adelita the loggerhead turtle and the record humpback whale as part of a small, growing fleet of famous tagged animals, each one real, named, and drawn from published, citable science.
Source: Gill, R. E., Tibbitts, T. L., Douglas, D. C., Handel, C. M., Mulcahy, D. M., Gottschalck, J. C., Warnock, N., McCaffery, B. J., Battley, P. F., & Piersma, T., "Extreme endurance flights by landbirds crossing the Pacific Ocean: ecological corridor rather than barrier?," Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276:447–457 (2009).
Frequently asked questions
Who was E7 the godwit?
E7 was a female bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri) — a shorebird about the size of a small gull — named for the 'E7' code on her leg flag. She was fitted with a surgically-implanted satellite transmitter in New Zealand in early 2007, and that autumn she made the longest non-stop flight ever recorded for any bird (Gill et al., Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2009).
How far did E7 fly without stopping?
She flew 11,680 km in a single unbroken flight — from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska to the Firth of Thames in New Zealand — taking about 8.1 days, from 29 August to the evening of 7 September 2007. She never landed once, which also makes it the longest journey of any animal made without pausing to feed (Gill et al., 2009).
How could she fly for eight days without resting or eating?
Before she left, E7 gorged on clams and worms until more than half her body weight was fat, and her gut and gizzard shrank to save weight she would not need in the air. She flapped almost continuously — godwits seldom glide — and rode favourable tailwinds across the Pacific, holding an average ground speed of about 56 km/h. Because she is a land bird, she could not feed or rest on the sea, so once she left the coast the flight had to be done in one go.
How did scientists know she never stopped?
Her implanted transmitter relayed her position and ground speed through satellites about 510 miles overhead, several times along the route. Biologists Bob Gill and Nils Warnock of the U.S. Geological Survey watched the pings draw a continuous line across the Pacific on their screens — her constant movement showed she stayed airborne the whole way. The tag had been expected to fail long before; it lasted just long enough to record the entire crossing.
Why was E7's flight such a big deal?
It roughly doubled the previous record for non-stop migratory flight and proved a long-running suspicion: that Alaskan bar-tailed godwits cross the whole central Pacific in one direct haul rather than island-hopping down the Asian coast. It reframed the open ocean not as a barrier but as a wind-assisted 'ecological corridor' — a fast, predator-free, disease-free route for a bird tough enough to fly it (Gill et al., 2009).
Is the track on the map exactly the route she flew?
It is an honest schematic of the recorded route, not a claim of exact daily pings. The study documents that she left the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta on 29 August 2007, passed about 400 miles west of Hawaii, crossed the international dateline north-north-east of Fiji, and landed at the mouth of the Piako River on the Firth of Thames on 7 September; the line is drawn smoothly along that course. Every date, distance and speed shown is a sourced figure from Gill et al. (2009).
SEE IT LIVE
Everything in this guide is on the live ocean map.