Hi All,
I was so excited to see Tyler Davis?s post on bird records. And darn thankful too, since I?m working on a poster ?Amazing Athletes of the Sea? and was looking for exactly that type of information. Still, all of this world record information leaves one questioning some of it, as Tyler did.
I?ve always wondered if the Yellow Billed Loon isn?t probably one of the fastest birds, (based on wingloading and wing shape) rather than the Red Breasted Merganser, which in any case deserves a lot of credit for doing 100, if that's true. (I'd always heard Mergansers could do 70, which is still amazing.) I somewhat doubt that a Gentoo can really outswim an Emperor Penguin, but that record is on the poster as of today. So much of this comes down to which species somebody happened to clock at a moment when it was in a really big hurry. I?d like to see a record distance per trip, number of trips/day and resultant total distance of feeding trips to and from the nest site. Wouldn?t this number be astonishing and might the Puffins or one of our Marbled Murrelets in search of its remnant old-growth nest site have a chance at the gold in this contest?
Too bad there?s no easy way to compare agility. Pelagic Fish seem to have concentrated on developing speed as a skill for predator avoidance, whereas many birds and most reef fish and Pinnipeds have instead concentrated on agility, but I guess there is no yardstick for measuring that.
Birds will always be the animals I?m fondest of and they do spectacular things, but still, no living animals can compare to the top fish as athletes in my opinion. How can you beat a 2 ton Bluefin Tuna which cruises the ocean at 30, bursts at the very least to 55, and can dive to 3500 feet down or a Sailfish that can hit 68 mph for very short bursts? All this is while pushing water. For comparison, I think I hit .5 mph in Lake WA yesterday.
Had a Pileated Woodpecker, 2 Osprey and Vaux?s Swifts at Seward Park today and the first Pileated I ever saw in our residential neighborhood yesterday.
Ed Newbold Beacon Hill, Seattle, newboldwildlife at netscape.net



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