A radio-tagged Amur falcon from Manipur has completed a remarkable 4,700-km non-stop flight from Somalia to central India in just 95 hours, crossing the Arabian Sea without a break, officials said.
Apapang, an adult male Amur falcon (Falco amurensis) tagged in Tamenglong district, ended its continuous flight on Monday, said Dr Suresh Kumar of the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, who has been tracking its migratory route, along with former divisional forest officer Kh Hitler of Tamenglong forest division.
Apapang ended its non-stop flight on Monday, "Apapang, to his record, did a non-stop flight from its Somalian stopover of nearly 4,750 km in a span of 95 hours," Kumar said.
Three satellite-tagged Amur falcons — Apapang, Ahu and Alang — named after a roosting site and the Barak and Irang rivers in Tamenglong district, began their migratory journey after being tagged with satellite transmitters at Chiuluan village on November 11, 2025.
Apapang is an adult male, while Ahu and Alang are females.
Since Sunday night, Apapang continued its non-stop flight for another 450 km, flying over the Vindhyas and making its first stop since departure from Somalia at 9.30 pm on Monday near the Sone river, about 120km south of Varanasi.
After an hour of rest, Apapang set off on its journey, covering another 200km to arrive at a hill forest, about 60 km southwest of the sacred city of Gaya, to stop for the night.
Officials noted that during its onward migration in November last year, Apapang had already completed a non-stop 6,100-km flight to Kenya in just under a week, also crossing the Arabian Sea.
The other two tagged falcons, Ahu and Alang, remain in Somalia, according to the latest satellite data.
The radio-tagging programme was initiated by the Tamenglong forest division in November 2018 to aid conservation efforts in the hill district.
Amur falcons, locally known as Akhuaipuina (Taomuanpui), are protected under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972.
They breed in southeast Russia and northeast China and migrate to their wintering grounds in southern Africa, returning through Afghanistan and East Asia.
Undertaking an annual journey of nearly 20,000 km, these pigeon-sized raptors arrive in large numbers in Nagaland and Manipur in October before departing in November after feeding sufficiently for their long, non-stop flight to Africa.
