Lost red knot found
‘Iconic little hero’ of conservation reappears
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20130518/NEWS08/305180023/Lost-red-knot-found
Written by
Molly Murray
The News Journal
For the international team of scientists and ornithologists working along the Delaware Bay shore this month, picking out the rock star of migratory shorebirds, known as red knot B-95, is a lot like finding a lost needle in a haystack.
But amid 500 or so other knots and hundreds of other shorebirds and gulls pecking at the horseshoe crab eggs at Mispillion Harbor late Thursday afternoon, Nigel Clark with the British Trust for Ornithology turned his spotting scope on a pack of feeding birds, focused on an orange leg flag and rediscovered B-95.
The bird, originally banded in 1995 at its wintering grounds in Tierra del Fuego, came to be called Moonbird because he flew the migratory trip from the tip of South America to the Canadian breeding grounds and back so many times that he exceeded the distance between earth and the moon. His amazing life is the subject of Phillip Hoose’s book “Moonbird: A Year on the Wind With the Great Survivor.â€ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ
He was not spotted in Canada last summer, nor did scientists see him in Tierra del Fuego in the fall or winter. The last time the bird had been spotted was on the New Jersey side of the Delaware Bay during the 2012 spring migration.
There was concern that the bird had died.
“It’s just unbelievable,†said Charles Duncan, director of the Manomet Shorebird Recovery Project. “The news that B-95 was seen in Delaware is a joy. So many people have learned about shorebird conservation through this iconic little hero.â€ÂÂÂÂÂÂÂ
Kevin Kalasz, who leads the Delaware Shorebird Project and is a biologist with the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, said no one got a picture of the bird.
In reality, with large numbers of shorebirds and gulls feeding on the beach, it can be a challenge to pick out a single bird. Many that have been captured over years of study have both leg bands and leg flags. The flags are color-coded to the country or region where they first were banded.
In B-95’s case, that was Tierra del Fuego. All birds tagged there have an orange leg flag.
Kalasz said Clark was doing his regular scan of the flock of feeding birds and at about 5 p.m. discovered the missing B-95.
Clark has been coming to work on the Delaware Bay Shorebird project since 1997.
“B-95’s been coming here longer than Nigel has,†Kalasz said. In addition, B-95 was in one of the first flocks to arrive, a signal that he has done this trip many times before and knows what needs to be done. Birds typically stay and feed for about two weeks, more than doubling their body weight. Timing is everything. They need to arrive at the Delaware Bay during the peak time of horsesehoe crab spawning and then reach Canada with enough fat reserves to hold them over until the snow melt and massive insect hatch.
Kalasz didn’t see the bird yesterday but did see it in 2010 when he was in the Mingan Archipelago for the fall southbound migration.
Duncan said the bird has become an important symbol because it was banded before there was a dramatic decline in the red knot population. Federal officials are considering whether to list the red knot for endangered species protection. A ruling is expected soon.
In flyovers of the Delaware Bay in 1981 and 1982, scientists estimated that 150,000 red knots were stopping over on the Delaware and New Jersy bayshores.
Scientists believe there may be three distinct populations of red knots that migrate through the Delaware Bay region: one set of about 7,500 birds that spends the winter on Georgia’s Altamaha Delta and Florida’s Gulf Coast, sometimes traveling north along the South Carolina coast in search of food; another group of about 7,500 birds that spends the winter in Maranhao in northern Brazil; and a third group of about 18,000 red knots that spends the winter in Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America.
Those southernmost birds travel an estimated 5,000 miles in the first leg of their spring migration.
But in recent years, somewhere around 15,000 red knots typically are counted along the Delaware Bayshore during the spring migration.
They are drawn by the abundance of protein-rich horseshoe crab eggs. The crab spawn and the spring migration coincide.
Scientists believe the dramatic population decline was linked to overharvesting of horseshoe crabs – used as bait in the whelk and eel fisheries – in the 1980s and early 1990s.
But when B-95 was banded by Canadian researcher Allan Baker, the expedition to Argentina was simply a research expedition and not geared to a species in collapse, Duncan said.
The bird, about the size of a robin, had made the migration journey – 5,000 miles from Tierra del Fuego to Mispillion Habor alone – dozens of times, flown on to Canada for breeding and then made a return journey to South American for much more than a decade, even as the species was spiraling into rapid population decline. The total south to north flight is an estimated 9,300 miles each way.
“He really is the great survivor,†Duncan said.