Join BirdNote tomorrow, November 30th!
Illustrator David Sibley and actor H. Jon Benjamin will face off in the bird illustration battle of the century during BirdNote's Year-end Celebration and Auction!
© Imran Shah
Bar-headed Geese, champions of high-altitude migration, leave their nesting grounds in Tibet and scale the Himalayan range on their way to wintering grounds in the lowlands of India. How do they do it? These geese have a breathing structure that extracts oxygen from thin air, even at 30,000 feet. Inhaled air passes through the lungs and is temporarily stored in several sacs, then circulated back through the lungs. The capillaries in their breast muscles are more numerous than in other birds, providing the muscles with a greater supply of oxygen.
Help keep BirdNote aloft with a donation.
BirdNote®
How High Birds Fly, Part II
Written by Frances Wood
This is BirdNote!
[Sounds of wind]
Right now a flock of Bar-headed Geese could be flying over Mt. Everest. These champions of high-altitude migration leave their nesting grounds in Tibet and scale the Himalayan range on their way to wintering grounds in the lowlands of India. With the help of tailwinds, they can cover the thousand-mile trip in a single day.
[Call of the Bar-headed Goose]
How do these gray-bodied, five-pound geese with zebra-striped heads breathe at such high altitudes, since pilots and many mountain climbers need oxygen at half that altitude? Like other birds, the geese have a unique breathing structure adapted to extract oxygen from thin air, even at 30,000 feet. After inhaled air passes through the lungs, it’s temporarily stored in several sacs, then circulated back through the lungs extracting still more oxygen.
[Repeat flock of Bar-headed Geese in flight]
The Bar-headed Geese also have a special type of hemoglobin, which helps their bodies absorb oxygen quickly at high altitudes. And the capillaries in their breast muscles are more numerous than in other birds, providing the muscles with a greater supply of oxygen.
Scientists are studying the physiology of these high-flying Bar-headed Geese to look for ways to help people cope with altitude and respiratory diseases.
There's always more to the story at BirdNote.org.
###
Call of the Bar-headed Goose provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Recorded by A.L. Priori.
Producer: John Kessler
Executive Producer: Chris Peterson
© 2014 Tune In to Nature.org September 2016/2019 / August 2022 Narrator: Mary McCann
ID#092505highIIKPLU flight-02b flight-02b-2009-09-02-MM
Frances Wood
Writer
Mary McCann
NarratorRelated Field Notes
Black Skimmers are a highly social species that live in colonies along coasts or on large inland
Birds colliding with glass is a real problem, especially during migration.