The Arctic Tern, Longest Migratory Animal on the Plane

I didn't know where to post this so feel free to move it if necessary.

The Arctic Tern is the farthest traveling migratory animal known to man. After breeding in the summer months in Greenland (as well as other parts of the arctic but I'll focus on these Greenland flocks), it travels from the south of Greenland to Antarctica in the Autumn months and during the winter months is mainly in Antarctica, then migrating back to Greenland in spring/summer.

http://www.arctictern.info/carsten/images/highres/ARTE_onemap.jpg

I would insert the image, however the size would take up way too much space.This diagram doesn't show the route taken by all Arctic Terns, as there are ones that travel down the Pacific as well. These tracks are recorded by geotracking devices that were attached to them while in Greenland then recovered a year later when they returned.

The Arctic Tern is nicknamed the "Bird of the Sun" since it's understood as being the animal that experiences more sunlight than any other due to it's migratory patter and corresponding path of the sun.

The most intriguing part to me is that, as seen from the above image, some travel to what would be considered the entire opposite side of the Antarctic Continent. Now on terms of why a bird would do this is very strange, especially considering the use of navigation based on magnetic poles. On a ball their sense of north would be directing them to a different place entirely, but these birds always return to their home nesting grounds. If you were to take out the idea of a southern pole and a spherical earth; replace it with true magnetic north, an AE projection (which isn't 100% accurate but it serves), and the true pattern of the sun then the routes these birds take makes way more sense. Instead of seeing them as climbing up and down the curve then flipping polar location; placing them on a flat plane, with the Antarctic ice shelf as a simple coast line with no magnetic singularity shooting out of it then the picture becomes clear and more economical for the animal. I mean it's said that they have either chemical or magnetic substances in their body that helps them navigate using magnetism, imagine what it would be like it that stuff suddenly flipped? I don't think instincts would allow that.

I'm sure there's many other anomalies associated with these animals and the placement of the migration pattern on a sphere so I might return to this some other time. Maybe someone more intelligent than I can point some things out and extrapolate better data.

http://www.arctictern.info/

A video talking about Arctic Terns and a better idea of how far along Antarctica they go...

I took the Arctic Tern migration map and put it on a Flat Earth map. This seems like we live on a radial ring magnet rather than a ball shaped magnet with equal poles.

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Thanks for making that! I don't know how accurate I'm willing to say the Antarctic coast line is on the models we're provided, but still interesting nonetheless.

Just some questions for future research... Is there evidence for polar circumnavigating animals? Individual populations that go from Greenland to Antarctica to Hawaii or maybe Philippines. How many miles? How trustworthy is the evidence? What methods were used? Could the patterns help map out Antarctica? How isolated are the populations? Are there groups that meet together from opposite ends?

Humpback Whale Migration.