Onon, the famous "Kenyan" bird that recently captivated online bird lovers, after defying all odds to fly more than 8,000km from Kenya to China in five days, today outdid itself by to completing a 26,000km route to finally find a home in northern Mongolia, near the Russian border, where it will settle down to breed this winter.
After an epic 26,000km round trip including 27 border crossings involving 16 countries, Onon is back at Khurkh Bird Banding Station in North Mongolia, the place where he was fitted with his tag on June 8, 2019.
FITTED WITH TAG
Onon was last detected in Kenyan territory on April 29, creating a sensation online for defying the odds at a time hundreds of Kenyans were stuck in foreign countries because of Covid-19.
This comes even as the portal announced the death of another bird, Bayan, tagged at the same time as Onon, and believed to have died either from extreme weather or possibly eaten by predators somewhere along its migratory route, an indication of the dangers Onon braved.
Biodiversity Atlas, an aggregator of Kenya's biodiversity data, estimates that the country has one of the richest avifauna diversities in Africa, with around 1,100 bird species.
