Red Knot birds
If you happen to be going to the Maryland Zoo in Baltimore this weekend, you may run into some young people from the GreenMount school who have formed a club to help save the red knot bird.
They will be handing out literature and talking about the shorebird and its plight in honor of "Earth Week."
Mike Hudson, a 12-year-old bird-lover who lives in the city, learned about the beautiful bird, and how its numbers were decreasing substantially.
As noted previously on bayblog, the red knots fly from the Tierra Del Fuego to the arctic, stopping along thre shores of Delaware Bay (Sluaghter Beach, Bowers Beach, etc.) to gorge on fatty horseshoe crab eggs to fill them up for their long trip north. They arrive emaciated, they leave full.
But recent years of harvesting horseshoe crabs en masse has endangered the bird, and states such as Delaware and New jersey have tried to put in moratoriums on harvesting horseshoes to help the bird. Those have not held up in court, forcing the states to instead restrict the harvest.
Anyway, the kids are advocating for horseshoe crabbing to be banned in Maryland and Virginia, as well as Delaware. You can learn mroe about their platform on their web site.
Comments
Is it still true that the Red Knot and another long-distance migrator, the Ruddy Turnstone, arrive on the beach at Cape May, NJ at the time of the highest tide in the month of May? When my wife and I were there a couple of years ago, access was closely controlled to avoid disturbing the birds, but birders were still able to observe.
Knowing the story, we thought it was one of the great natural events to witness. Another one is across the river in Delaware. In the evening you may see a flock of snow geese unfurl themselves from the sky into a pajama party for the night.
Posted by: Tom in Perry Hall | April 25, 2008 9:47 PM