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B95 now giving researchers an eyeful

First Delaware, then New Jersey. Most recently, he's been checking out the crab eggs in Fortescue.

"It seems like B95 is continuing his publicity tour!" Charles Duncan of the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences emailed me last night.

First, the famed bird was spotted on the Delaware side of Delaware Bay last Thursday. Then he was spotted on the Jersey side on Friday. Then....where'd he go?

To Fortescue, still on the Jersey side, it turns out.

Several observers spotted him there on Sunday. And on Monday, by Yann Rochepault and Cristophe Buidin. Both are from Quebec and are part of the international team of bird researchers led by Amanda Dey and Larry Niles.  The researchers crowd into a Reeds Beach shorebird house, rev up their computers, post their charts of bird weights and sightings and spend a month immersed in all things having to do with red knots and shorebirds.

Luckily, Buidin was able to get a photo of B95.  It's the one with this post.

B95 is nicknamed the Moonbird, because in his long life -- 20 years, the longest of any red knot known, the researchers say -- he has likely flown the equivalent of the distance to the moon, and halfway back.

Scroll down on the blog site to see earlier news about B95, red knots and shorebirds.

Meanwhile, kudos to the spotters are coming in from worldwide -- Canada, the US, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, Switzerland, and –get this—Bangladesh, reports Duncan, who is director of the Shorebird Recovery Project for Manomet. Online congratulations, Facebook likes and comments are piling up here and elsewhere.

I betting that somewhere, someone is busy printing t-shirts that say, "I spotted B95."

Keep coming back. I'll post more updates and comments as I get them.