What a bird will do for love.
The Hudsonian Whimbrel has one of the longest mating migrations in the animal kingdom, flying every year from South America to the northern shores of Alaska and Canada to breed, before making the return trip for a total of almost 30,000 kilometres. Each one-way flight takes about two months, with stops of one or two weeks along the way to gorge on crabs, marine worms and insects.
It's an astonishingly gruelling journey, one that tropical ecologist Dr. Timm Döbert and extreme athlete Leanna Carriere aim to emulate on bicycles starting this summer - minus the diet of insects, worms and crabs - and the bi-coastal love affair. Their expedition, called Wings of Survival, will be the first time that humans have physically followed a migratory bird species along a global flight path.
Covering 30,000 kilometres from their starting point in Alaska to their destination in Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia - twice as long as the birds with all the twists and turns - the cyclists will be supported by a van with multiple drivers spelling each other off along the way.
The goal is two-fold. The first is to learn more about the threatened shorebird's migratory route, behaviour and survival rates, a research collaboration with Erin Bayne in the Faculty of Science, as well as Chris Guglielmo at Western University and Juan Navedo at Universidad Austral de Chile.
In full flight, whimbrels are capable of continuously flapping their wings for six to seven days at a stretch, covering 8,000 to 9,000 kilometres without eating, drinking or sleeping.
It's a feat, says Döbert, that seems to defy natural law.
"How do they fly for so long non-stop? We know they can put half of their brain to sleep, so they can rest by shutting off one hemisphere. There's a bit of magic to it that we just don't understand."
The second research focus continues a project with Amber Mosewich, in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation and member of the Women and Children's Health Research Institute. They are exploring how the human body withstands long-term physical and psychological exertion, amplified by human-induced environmental changes such as air pollution and heat waves.
"It may sound like fun, and I think if you take away the vehicles on the road it's probably really enjoyable," says Döbert. "But just being exposed to traffic is easily underestimated. The noise, pollution and aggressive driving - it takes a big toll concentrating to stay safe."
Wings of Survival chose the Hudsonian Whimbrel as one of the world's greatest 'athletes', but also because it is considered a highly threatened "tipping-point" species that reflects the health of the planet, according to the Birds Canada.
The birds have lost more than 70 per cent of their entire population since the 1970s, largely due to habitat destruction along its migratory route. In Canada, their population may be as high as 78 per cent lower than it was 50 years ago.
In January, Döbert and his research team travelled to southern Chile to tag five whimbrels with GPS trackers. Three of the birds left for Alaska in late March, making first contact with land after 9,000 km and five days non-stop flying to the shores of Baja, California to refuel for the final leg of their journeys.
"It's a pretty solitary flight," says Döbert. "For juveniles it can be their maiden north-bound journey, and sometimes they don't migrate. It's fascinating to see how, just like humans, the birds make individual choices. That helps us to understand the places we need to focus on."
Two of the five tagged birds have now arrived in Alaska (the others were seduced by habitats along the way), where they are mating and preparing their newborns for the journey south. The team has lost the GPS signal for one of them.
Döbert and Carriere hope to track down the remaining bird, or at least get close to its whimbrel cousins, in mid-July before the migration south begins tracking the coastal spine of the Americas high in the air, the humans covering the same route over land.
When asked if it's a race, as he often is, Döbert concedes it's one they have little hope of winning.
"We might catch the birds if they decide to stop in Mexico again, but they're way faster. If you take away their stops, they can do top to bottom in 10 to 12 days at 80-90 kilometres an hour - it's pretty crazy."
Connecting planetary, human health
As comprehensive and meticulous as the collection of data will be, perhaps more important is the educational mission motivating the trip, says Döbert.
"We want to show people the connection between human and planetary health," he says.
"Something I think we've lost, even that I've lost over the years, is just how fragile the planet is around us, and how it connects with our own human health," adds Carriere.
They will engage communities and schools along the way, and have partnered with a number of organizations to generate public interest, including world-renown brands like Patagonia and Swarovski Optic.
One of their main stops will be at the Fraser River Estuary in Vancouver - the largest on Canada's Pacific coast, supporting 1.7 million birds annually in the 32,000-hectare transition zone where the Fraser River meets the Strait of Georgia. Döbert's team will give presentations sponsored by Ducks Unlimited and Birds Canada.
They've also partnered with an Ontario organization called Exploring by the Seat of Your Pants, which virtually connects scientists and explorers to hundreds of thousands of elementary and high-school students every year, so they can follow the journey from the start of the new school year.
"For about seven months we'll bring young kids into the expedition, where we'll share our experiences and they can ask questions."
"We're also getting schools to use a system where they can anticipate our arrivals, so when we get to those schools, we can actually talk to the students in person. We are building an interactive map where people can track the movements of both the cyclists and the birds."
From Vancouver, the pair will make more stops in the whimbrels' wake along the Pacific coast, then on to Central America, across the Darién Gap from Panama to Colombia, into the Andean highlands of Peru, and down the South American coast, chasing the progression of summer underneath their avian companions. The entire journey will be captured by Moving Artistry Productions to produce a 90-minute documentary film.
Döbert knows it's one thing to engage minds, but reaching hearts is equally urgent, he says, to "nurture an emotional connection to planetary stewardship."
And what better way than to follow the tortuous journey of birds in a long-distance love affair.
"We often treat climate change, biodiversity loss and those different crises as separate things, but they are essentially all rooted in our disconnect from the natural world.
"We've accumulated so much scientific knowledge in the last 50 years, but unless we carry it into the world in an emotional and relatable way, it's going to be very hard to bring people on board."
