A long-distance traveller on a refuelling stopover

A bar-tailed godwit on the mudflats may be on her way from the Arctic to sub-Saharan Africa. But she’s a lightweight compared to her New Zealand cousinsA long-billed, long-legged wader stands on the edge of the mud, waiting for the tide to recede so she can begin to feed. Nothing about her stands out: she isn’t strikingly pied like the avocets; she doesn’t have the curlew’s impossibly long, curved bill; and she isn’t flying around while yelling a frantic, urgent cal