Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
was made in sand or mud, you can tell if a heron or a crane made it by looking for signs
of a back toe.
LONG LIVE THE BIRDS
Most wild birds never see their first birthday. There are so many dangers out there that
birds produce fairly large numbers of young simply to ensure that during their lifetime
there will be offspring to replace them.
But once an individual bird has survived its first year and has developed skills to ne-
gotiate each season, its life expectancy goes up dramatically. We can tell how long some
individual birds have lived in the wild if they were banded with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service leg band and were recaptured or found dead at a later time. The ten longest-lived
species recorded by the U.S. Geological Survey's Bird Banding Laboratory in Laurel,
Maryland, as of February 2008 are:
Laysan Albatross 50 years 8 months
Black-footed Albatross 40 years 8 months
Great Frigatebird 38 years 2 months
White Tern 35 years 11 months
Sooty Tern 35 years 10 months
Wandering Albatross 34 years 7 months
Arctic Tern 34 years
Red-tailed Tropicbird 32 years 8 months
Black-browed Albatross 32 years 5 months
Atlantic Puffin 31 years
Every one of those “top ten” birds is a species that spends its life on the ocean. But
some inland species have surprisingly long lives, too. Here are some randomly selected
records, from shortest to longest known lifespan:
Greater Roadrun-
ner
3
years
Varied Thrush
5
years
