May 23 – The Bristle-Thighed Curlew

The Bristle-thighed curlew is an amazing bird! When the Alaskan-born chicks are just five weeks old, the parents abandon them and migrate to the South Pacific. For the next few weeks, the chicks go on a feeding frenzy, fattening themselves for the same 5000 mile journey. The young birds are on their own to find the tiny islands of Fiji in the vast Pacific Ocean. They travel non-stop without a guide and arrive with pinpoint accuracy to the same mudflats and sandy beaches where their parents have flown. Unlike seabirds that can stop, rest, and feed along the way, curlews will drown if they land on the ocean. The 5000 mile trip is all or nothing.

How do you explain a curlew’s ability to navigate, untaught, to the opposite hemisphere some 5000 miles across the Pacific, flying non-stop, and landing with pin point accuracy at their winter home? Evolution implies that all this happened by accident and chance. What are the odds? Navigation over vast distances does not happen by accident and chance! The Creator coded within the curlew the route to take. When there is a code, there must be a code-maker, and that code-maker is the Creator God.

Psalm 145:9

KJV: The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works.

NIV: The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made.

Learn More

Wings on the wind – How do migrating birds know exactly when, and where, to go?