Animals cover astonishing distances when they are looking for food. While caribou, reindeer and wolves clock up impressive mileage on land, seabirds are unrivaled in their traveling distances. Arctic terns travel from the Arctic to Antarctica and back as part of their annual migration. Wandering albatrosses (Diomedea exulans) fly the equivalent of ten times to the moon and back over their lifetimes.

There has been a lot of research into how seabirds choose their flight paths and find food. They seem to use their sight or sense of smell to assess local conditions.

Wandering albatrosses can travel more than 10,000km in a single foraging trip, though, and we don’t know much about how these birds use mid- and long-range cues from their environment to decide where to go.

For the first time, however, my team’s recent study gives an insight into how birds such as wandering albatrosses may use sound to determine what conditions are like further away.