There’s more news on the red knot front.
When we last left the subspecies, a good number of those leaving the Delaware Bay in late May had reached optimum body weights, priming them for reproductive success when they reached the Arctic.
I wrote about that development here.
Now, the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network has chimed in with an article that contains more good news. In the spring, researchers documented a phenomenal feat: “Two individual knots stunned everyone by being seen in Florida by Pat and Doris Leary only 13 days after they were last seen in San Antonio Oeste, Argentina. The straight-line distance (which would involve an undocumented crossing of the Andes) would be about 7,800 kilometers; a more likely coastal route would involve traveling some 10,000 kilometers. This is the first hard evidence that knots move north without significant stopovers and is the result of intensified banding and resighting efforts made at an international scale over recent years.”
Then, on Delaware Bay, “Luís Benegas of Argentina, working with Allan Baker and Patricia González, resighted “B-95,” the same adult red knot he banded in Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego (Argentina), in 1995! B-95 is now at least 17 years old and continues to inspire us—and our supporters!”
But, alas, the news from up north has not been as good.
The Winnipeg Free Press noted last month that winter still gripped the Arctic, and migratory birds were unable to breed. “Prolonged cold snowy conditions in the Hudson Bay area are expected to obliterate the breeding season for migratory birds and most other species of wildlife this year,” the reporter wrote.
“According to Robert Jefferies, professor emeritus of botany at the University of Toronto, the last time there was a late spring in northern Manitoba, in 1983, there was a total reproductive "bust" in lesser snow geese. Most species of birds did not nest at all.”
So, as usual, the plot thickens....
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