<< > That said, I think the ocean is a pretty big migration. I'd be surprised
if
> anything crosses the "equator."
Where's that, then?>>
I assume he means a line drawn between the Gates of Dusk and Dawn. Not that's really an 'equator' in any normal sense of the word (but he did put it in quote marks).
<<I think it's not unlikely that a Genertelan bird could manage as far as the
extreme south of the East Isles, if they can get across the neck of the Sea of
Fog; Pamaltelan birds may be able to go as far north as Teleos, if they can
manage a hop of similar length. (Which is actually further north than the
former, not that that helps much.) Making the trans-continental round trip
would require a single hop of about
1500km, which is a little stiff (not sure if there's a terrestrial bird that
can manage this (this is what we pay Trotsky so lavishly for, isn't it?),>>
Actually, your tax pounds pay for me to examine organs removed during surgical operations to see what was wrong with them :-)
At any rate, to answer your question, the American Lesser Golden Plover flies over 4000 km of open sea to get from Newfoundland (having spend summer on the north coast of Canada) to Brazil (so it can spend, er, the other summer in Argentina). For a change of scenery it goes back up to Canada via Central America, and the young birds cheat in their first year by nipping down south on the same route while their parents struggle across the sea, but if the plover can manage one 4000 km hop a year without pegging out, Gloranthan birds should be able to manage a couple of 1500 km ones.
Now, OK, the plover is a shorebird not really an inland bird like, say, a swallow. Most birds have the common sense to stay over land as much as possible, utilising features such as the Dardanelles and the straits of Gibraltar to get from Europe to Africa and back. What's really critical is the prevailing wind, so one could come up with some plausible migration patterns by studying the maps at the end of Missing Lands.
<<Not that I have any objection to some sort of ueber-albatross that flies
all
4000km in one go, just for the heck of it, mind you.>>
Albatrosses probably couldn't be bothered to visit dry land at all if it wasn't for the fact that they have to lay eggs, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if some spend months or even years just going round the Homeward Ocean in a big circle before nipping off to the coast somewhere to procreate (which they don't do until they're at least 10 years old, BTW).
But, yeah, there's got to be some bird that travels from one continent to the other, even if it does it via the Eastern Isles.
Forward the glorious Red Army!
Trotsky
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