The purpose of this post is to report my systematic observations of my feeders from November 1, 2014 to May 15, 2015 as I am still interested in the accuracy of the various advertisements that one can attract birds that would not normally be present by making food available. Among my previous Modest Birder posts ## 3, 13 ( lengthy one), 14 and 20, record some of my previous observation. # 13 also addresses the claims of such advertisements.
This time I was inspired by several very well done publications by the people of Hawk Mountain with the theme "If you plant them (i.e. native food plants), they (i.e. the birds) will come." At Hawk Mountain with its fine native plant garden in a bird rich habitat, this is probably true, but I am willing to bet that the birds attracted to the garden were already there, before the garden reached its present extent. One of these would be the Chestnut-sided Warbler in one of the illustrations. A pair of these took up residence in 2010 in the jungle tha sprung up on the untended 20 acres across our road that not only has native plants but anything that the wind and birds provided including the fast growing and early flowering Bartlett Pears.
I couln't, of course, discourage the planting of natives and am increasingly replacing the stuff I inherited from previous owners (one of which, I was pleasantly surprised, had been a wildflower enthousiast) with natives. Some of these, like trout lilies, spring beauties, quaker ladies and columbines have been present in the untended parts since the house was built in the 1960s. The first three make a wonderful tapestry that attracts insects and these attract a passing Bluebird and the resident Phoebes. The columbines attract the resident Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, but I have not discovered where the nest. I see it when the columbines have done their blooming, for ex. on the honey-less cultivated red geraniums that I brought back from France in 1983 and kept going since by annual cuttings. Nostalgia keeps these around. To please the Hummers I planted Bergamots, but here again I'm not a purist as, in dislike of the mauve wild species, I opted for the red Jacob Kline cultivar, Hummers being as amorous of red as am I. But they also come to the local penstamons and they would love the reds from the Arizona road dividers that sooner or later I'll plant, extending "native" to beyond Penna.
In the 15 years that we lived here I found that the best way to attract Bluebirds is to have a centenary gnarled oak like the one that stood on the bank across our road before that was moved over in 2007. Also important was the extensive lawn that was cut only once every 2 weeks by my neighbor. And having electric wires helps also as the Bluebirds perched all along the 1/4 mile bank to hawk the insects hidden in the grass. The oak gone, another neighbor with small kids put up bluebird boxes and for 2 years one was used, but the lawn having disappeared under the second growth brush, the birds now only appear as migrants.
I have often wondered how large a property one needs to feed a variety of birds. For ex. we have 6 dogwoods and we can see 4 more, we also have 2 female hollies and 4 female winterberries. In late October 2014 a flock of 23 Robins took only 3 days to do away with all the fruit, once "helped" by 2 Sapsuckers and 1 Mocking Bird. The Sapsuckers moved on as did the Robins and the Mocking Bird moved back to its territory across 113, a light industrial park, of all places. The holly berries were not favorites and about half were still therefor Christmas decorations, the Cardinals finally having eaten the last ones by 1/29. I noticed that a wonderful large English holly near the post office keeps its berries nearly all winter although there are some 15 Robins roaming around town. And in New Jersey, hundreds of native hollies still have most of their berries in spite of wintering Robins and Cedar Waxwings, not to speak of the ravenous Starlings, Grackles and what have you.
Talking about New Jersey: The NJ ABA birdline had 6 reports on "stormbirds" during Juno with its high winds and snow (Jan. 26-27, 2015). These birders may have hoped for a Redpoll as there was something of an invasion the previous week. I checked them out of curiosity as I found that our birds were fewer in number, the Hairy Woodpeckers having disappeared and of the downies only 3 small and 2 larger ones are left, while nothing new arrived; all of which is unusual, though not as unusual as the 15 or so Robins that forage in the sunny mud spots in our slowly flowing creek (the -10F froze the mud en the Robins have not returned on 1/29). The NJ reports noted more Whitethroats and or juncos, only one had uncommon Am. Tree Sparrow and another: "the only unusual bird was a starling, but at least I can add that to my yardlist."
Starlings are the bane of my existence. Their hangout is the adjacent farm and they often swarm over the grass of the nearby light industrial park or that of the grade school. But come January and snow they appear in our garden. First one or two that divide their attention between the seed and the suet. But if the snow persists these "pioneers" are soon accompanied by an entire flock of up to 30. They sit in small groups spread out in the trees as far as the opposite slope while six or seven, in relays, fight flutteringly over the suet all other birds having left to avoid their stiletto like beaks. It takes them about 4 hours to do away with the entire cake; without starlings it takes the woodpeckers, nuthatches, Brown Creeper and an occasional titmouse about 4 to 5 days. I decided not to replace the suet an lo and behold, we now have 1 or 2 starlings and some afternoons up to five, but they stay for only 10 minutes at the most. One starling arrived, landed on the ring for the suet basket, looked around and hurried of. They dislike the tube feeder, it is not easy to bent their ungainly bodies to get at the food with their long beaks. A few years ago I had spread food over a patch of the herb garden an the entire flock of starlings was acting out their version of "black Friday." When I happened to hit one of them with a beebee (not hard to miss) they kept up their frantic pushing, trampling on the dead bird (which became food for our local raccoon).
In one of the earlier posts I discussed the type of seeds our birds prefer. For my birthday my youngest grandchild brought a bag of a "complete mix" that included white and golden millet, nijer and canary seed. Just as in previous years, most of that seed ended up on the ground as I watched the finches fling it out of the way as they searched for cracked nuts and even black sunflower seed (which took some management before they had removed the shell). I usually mix Cardinal and Chickadee food and that appears to keep every one happy. The suet cakes are my real problem. I have tried every type offered and find that the suet eaters like them all. But so do the squirrels and the occasional raccoons. A cake would last a day and the following morning only some bits still stuck to the basket. Before my son fixed a "rodent resistant" system, the raccoons managed to take down the entire basket and make off with it down the hill to the thick spreading yews near the creek. Now I use hot pepper suet and when it's out of stock I smear both sides of any other type with something like the spicy dip of a shrimp cocktail.
The bag of the Christmas present carries 12 color pictures of birds one can attract. It's obviously assumed that the buyer feeds birds all year and is somewhat knowledgeable, for Grosbeaks and Towhees are not winter birds in most of the USA and these also need an even more specific habitat than Cardinals, Mourning Doves and Chickadees. We have had Rose-breasted Grosbeaks as breeders in 2 years and they didn't arrive until the end of April. Towhees arrive irregularly, once in march, but usually around April 15. In the earliest posts, now deleted, I objected to those picture as misleading and false advertising because my barber's wheelchair bound mother liked to look at birds and was disappointed that she mostly saw little brown ones. I still feel uneasy about those pictures having made a survey of "affordable homes" with feeders (most of them filled only during the winter) and wonder whether these people are as informed as the advertising on the bags assumed. But then one never knows. I used to shop in a supermarket that carried bird food only in the winter and in small bags of nijer, a mixture of millets or of cracked corn, that carried no pictures. It must have satisfied the needs of the birds in a small town with small garden plots and tree lined streets.
and then I ended up in the hospital until august and thus the experiments in the yard come to an and.
Showing posts with label the modest birder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the modest birder. Show all posts
Monday, October 12, 2015
Monday, July 28, 2014
forever wild?
On Sunday, July 6, 2012 the frontpage of the NYT's SundayReview featured an article on "Rethinking the Wild." In general it is a thoughtful article and the changes discussed in the management of the Wilderness Act 1974 are actually minor and commonsensical. Most are concerned with remedying and forestalling the effects of the northward movement of warmer temperatures. The central question is raised by one of the Act's promoters, viz. that "we should be guardians, not gardeners." The article's recommendations are summed up as "We need to be more nuanced in our hands-off approach."
The danger lies that once the hands-off approached is open to modification the politicians will gradually introduce ecologically harmful "nuances" on the advice of graduates from forestry etc. departments of State Universities that are primarily funded by commercial corporations hungry for more resources. On the premise that one should not bite the hand that feeds these Departments they are not conducive to promote free thought. Some pretty disastrous remedies emerging from the Department of Agriculture include the recommendation of creating windbreaks and hedgerows of multiflora roses the hips of which provide food for many songbirds who caused the roses to become pests invading every untended plot including the "forever wild" ones. An other such invasive remedy was the use of the Japanese honeysuckle used to stabilize railroad banks against erosion. That too gets spread by birds and in my untended woods the multifloras provide support for the honeysuckle creating an area much loved by breeding songbirds and migrating or wintering guests.
The problem of the Act lies in the fact that its aim to protect wilderness areas from destructive human exploitation was based on a pre-1970's concept of "hands-off" as direct physical action. Virtually all ecologist then were not fully - or at all - aware of the long term and distant - as well as cumulative - effect of human action that creates climate change as well as the acidification of the earth's surface. There were instances of man-made natural disasters in the past such as the dustbowl of the 1930s, which in the memory of most became a draught caused by capricious nature because the Plains became fertile and populated again and thus providing arguments for the eco-sceptics of today, arguments that are still more salient than the disappearance of the Ice Age when the Sahara had the climate of Europe and Canada an new England uninhabitable. Draughts are seen as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods which have been around ever since records were kept. And people continue to build homes in fragile coastal areas or in forests prone to wildfires, for most people remain unaware or disregard the warnings of the steady increase in such disasters and their violence. Our culture allows us to satisfy our desires and provides the justification for it by providing a moral, political and economic system of protection one socially costly aspect of which are the insurance companies. I am reminded of the devastating hurricane of the early sixties when the then Secretary of the Interior suggested that the destroyed areas on New Jersey barrier islands be turned into a national park. Today these areas are more built up than before.
Of course, the article's nuanced approach can not be a one time remedy for of climate change will be with us forever as the world population continues to increase and modernization of the poorer nations accelerates. Thus we see the 1950s smog of London replicated in today's Peking. A telling instance was described in a long article in the NYT of 7/27 concerning the adoption of frozen food as a staple in Chinese households and the deleterious consequences on the environment of the increased demand for refrigeration.
But even if there was no man-made climate change, the wilderness areas that were created under the Act would inevitably change as suggested by the maxim that all wild areas revert to forest, a maxim well illustrated by the forests of New England in many of which one comes across the old stone walls of farms that were abandoned since the late 19th century. This is in a climate suitable for forests; in other places it may be deserts, a place where gardening is a challenge.
Usually when we are in Maine in August we visit the Singing Meadow Preserve in Edgecomb, a truly favored spot. Although it is mowed once a year to keep the brush down and paths are mowed more than once, the landscape has been changing, subtly, but changing nevertheless. Alders are particularly resistant to the yearly mowing and I suspect that it's done by a landscaper "who has adopted" the Meadows that it is not done very well. And there certainly is no resemblance to the original working farm. But as an "abandoned meadows" preserve the "forever wild" doesn't apply as the meadows would no longer have the same singing birds and insects. And I wonder whether the "forever wild" concept didn't mean wild as it appeared when designated. If that includes saving the species that were there then at the time, the preservation becomes more like curating a museum.
The danger lies that once the hands-off approached is open to modification the politicians will gradually introduce ecologically harmful "nuances" on the advice of graduates from forestry etc. departments of State Universities that are primarily funded by commercial corporations hungry for more resources. On the premise that one should not bite the hand that feeds these Departments they are not conducive to promote free thought. Some pretty disastrous remedies emerging from the Department of Agriculture include the recommendation of creating windbreaks and hedgerows of multiflora roses the hips of which provide food for many songbirds who caused the roses to become pests invading every untended plot including the "forever wild" ones. An other such invasive remedy was the use of the Japanese honeysuckle used to stabilize railroad banks against erosion. That too gets spread by birds and in my untended woods the multifloras provide support for the honeysuckle creating an area much loved by breeding songbirds and migrating or wintering guests.
The problem of the Act lies in the fact that its aim to protect wilderness areas from destructive human exploitation was based on a pre-1970's concept of "hands-off" as direct physical action. Virtually all ecologist then were not fully - or at all - aware of the long term and distant - as well as cumulative - effect of human action that creates climate change as well as the acidification of the earth's surface. There were instances of man-made natural disasters in the past such as the dustbowl of the 1930s, which in the memory of most became a draught caused by capricious nature because the Plains became fertile and populated again and thus providing arguments for the eco-sceptics of today, arguments that are still more salient than the disappearance of the Ice Age when the Sahara had the climate of Europe and Canada an new England uninhabitable. Draughts are seen as tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes and floods which have been around ever since records were kept. And people continue to build homes in fragile coastal areas or in forests prone to wildfires, for most people remain unaware or disregard the warnings of the steady increase in such disasters and their violence. Our culture allows us to satisfy our desires and provides the justification for it by providing a moral, political and economic system of protection one socially costly aspect of which are the insurance companies. I am reminded of the devastating hurricane of the early sixties when the then Secretary of the Interior suggested that the destroyed areas on New Jersey barrier islands be turned into a national park. Today these areas are more built up than before.
Of course, the article's nuanced approach can not be a one time remedy for of climate change will be with us forever as the world population continues to increase and modernization of the poorer nations accelerates. Thus we see the 1950s smog of London replicated in today's Peking. A telling instance was described in a long article in the NYT of 7/27 concerning the adoption of frozen food as a staple in Chinese households and the deleterious consequences on the environment of the increased demand for refrigeration.
But even if there was no man-made climate change, the wilderness areas that were created under the Act would inevitably change as suggested by the maxim that all wild areas revert to forest, a maxim well illustrated by the forests of New England in many of which one comes across the old stone walls of farms that were abandoned since the late 19th century. This is in a climate suitable for forests; in other places it may be deserts, a place where gardening is a challenge.
Usually when we are in Maine in August we visit the Singing Meadow Preserve in Edgecomb, a truly favored spot. Although it is mowed once a year to keep the brush down and paths are mowed more than once, the landscape has been changing, subtly, but changing nevertheless. Alders are particularly resistant to the yearly mowing and I suspect that it's done by a landscaper "who has adopted" the Meadows that it is not done very well. And there certainly is no resemblance to the original working farm. But as an "abandoned meadows" preserve the "forever wild" doesn't apply as the meadows would no longer have the same singing birds and insects. And I wonder whether the "forever wild" concept didn't mean wild as it appeared when designated. If that includes saving the species that were there then at the time, the preservation becomes more like curating a museum.
Monday, June 23, 2014
the modest birder(22) a big day from my chair
May 14, 2014. This was the birdiest day ever from my armchair in the living room overlooking our descending slope and the steeper up-slope on the other side of the creek. A few trees were still leafing out and the hickories were blooming, most upper stories were visible. Fortunately the hickories are late for the two closest have overhanging branches that, in full leaf, create a dense curtain. I looked out at 8.30 to see if there was any movement. There had been a few birds most days, mostly Yellow Rumps interspersed with a Blue-headed and twice a Warbling vireo. On the tenth a Swainson Thrush hang around all day foraging on the lawn by the creek for a few minutes only to disappear in the brush. By 1 pm it hopped along the wall of the herb terrace. It was still around early the next morning but then the excitement was caused by a Blue Grosbeak that fed for about 20 minutes in the newly weeded herb beds which are about 25ft below the window; a "first of the yard" bird. The next few day we were busy readying and planting the vegetable beds.
The first bird on the 14th was an Baltimore Oriole, probably one of the four that were around since the 3d. Soon after a Cooper's landed on a branch of the 2nd tree down the slope. It shook its feathers as if it came out of an attack. It was probably a male and still in its 1st year plumage. While I was watching the hawk, a crow came over being harassed by three of our local Blue Jays. I was just about to go outside to check the new plantings when a small flock of warblers appeared in the crowns of the neighbor's woods (which are widest (300 yards) an densest of our woods that begin in a triangle where the creek goes under the road, about .4 miles to the South). From 10am till noon there was continuous activity, mostly in the upper stories following the creek that leaves our woods between steep wooded slopes on its way down to the Perkiomen (at about 3/4 mile), a "scenic river" that is also very wooded and provided a corridor in a generally North-South direction.
It became busy and I dismissed the brown ones as unidentified females to concentrate on the colored males some of which obligingly came down and in the closest trees, e.g. a Black-throated Green, a Tennessee, 3 Black and Whites and a Chestnut-sided (which may have been the resident in the second growth 27 acre field across the street), as well as a female Cape May, a female Black-throated Blue and a few Yellow Rumps. Active for several hours in the upper story of an oak were two Blackburnians, at least one Baybreasted and a Redstart. Also passing through were a male Indigo Btgn, a female Scarlet Tanager, a Hairy Woodpecker. Most exciting were 3 Sandhill Cranes at 1.30 that floated in small circles above the farm fields and above our trees in small circles, briefly flapping occasionally to maintain height; recalling the hundreds seen in Arizona or the flocks of Common Cranes coming in for a landing at one of the lakes in Champagne (France). The were also "first of the yard" birds. Some warblers also hang around during the afternoon, all in the upper stories and I assumed they were the same as the morning birds.
My tally of the migrants seen from 8.30 till 5pm, having no doubt missed some while I checked my Sibley, made coffee, etc., was 61, including the unidentified "females." Nine identified male warblers (with a Blackpoll among some "15 left overs" the next morning) and the 2 females is pretty much the number of warbler species that I see in our woods during both Spring and Fall migrations. It turned out that the same week was a big warbler week according to regional ABA reports and at a nearby reserve 23 species were counted.
But because I sat there for most of the day (I had to get up frequently in the afternoon to avoid getting stiff in my 83 year old bones), I also became aware how many local residents visit our woods. There were a total of 37 birds of 18 species including 2 Great-crested Flycatchers as well as the Great-blue Heron that checks out the creek bed about twice each week. Not seen were the Scarlet Tanagers that are residents for the first time in the 14 years that we live here, or the Phoebe that breeds under the neighbor's balcony and of which the first fledgling sat on the feeder pole this morning (6-23-14).
The tanagers became more frequent visitors as May wore on. The male often sang in the oaks right above the house and on the 28th he was "flycatching" near 3 Baltimore Orioles and the next day both the female and male were foraging in the trees above the creek. As I was watching them a Willow Flycatcher was in the lower branches, probably the same one that appeared irregularly since the 16th and more surprising were, what to the wishful birder in me looked like, 2 Philadelphia Vireos. Pretty ironic as it had been a target bird for our Maine trip last year. But, of course, they were Warbling Vireos; they were still around on June 4 and 6 when one was feeding the other and Philadelpias would be well established on their northern breeding grounds. Also odd for June was the appearance of a male Yellow Warbler, that was busy foraging in the close hickories for several hours one afternoon and again the next morning. A visitor from the brushy creek bed?
The first bird on the 14th was an Baltimore Oriole, probably one of the four that were around since the 3d. Soon after a Cooper's landed on a branch of the 2nd tree down the slope. It shook its feathers as if it came out of an attack. It was probably a male and still in its 1st year plumage. While I was watching the hawk, a crow came over being harassed by three of our local Blue Jays. I was just about to go outside to check the new plantings when a small flock of warblers appeared in the crowns of the neighbor's woods (which are widest (300 yards) an densest of our woods that begin in a triangle where the creek goes under the road, about .4 miles to the South). From 10am till noon there was continuous activity, mostly in the upper stories following the creek that leaves our woods between steep wooded slopes on its way down to the Perkiomen (at about 3/4 mile), a "scenic river" that is also very wooded and provided a corridor in a generally North-South direction.
It became busy and I dismissed the brown ones as unidentified females to concentrate on the colored males some of which obligingly came down and in the closest trees, e.g. a Black-throated Green, a Tennessee, 3 Black and Whites and a Chestnut-sided (which may have been the resident in the second growth 27 acre field across the street), as well as a female Cape May, a female Black-throated Blue and a few Yellow Rumps. Active for several hours in the upper story of an oak were two Blackburnians, at least one Baybreasted and a Redstart. Also passing through were a male Indigo Btgn, a female Scarlet Tanager, a Hairy Woodpecker. Most exciting were 3 Sandhill Cranes at 1.30 that floated in small circles above the farm fields and above our trees in small circles, briefly flapping occasionally to maintain height; recalling the hundreds seen in Arizona or the flocks of Common Cranes coming in for a landing at one of the lakes in Champagne (France). The were also "first of the yard" birds. Some warblers also hang around during the afternoon, all in the upper stories and I assumed they were the same as the morning birds.
My tally of the migrants seen from 8.30 till 5pm, having no doubt missed some while I checked my Sibley, made coffee, etc., was 61, including the unidentified "females." Nine identified male warblers (with a Blackpoll among some "15 left overs" the next morning) and the 2 females is pretty much the number of warbler species that I see in our woods during both Spring and Fall migrations. It turned out that the same week was a big warbler week according to regional ABA reports and at a nearby reserve 23 species were counted.
But because I sat there for most of the day (I had to get up frequently in the afternoon to avoid getting stiff in my 83 year old bones), I also became aware how many local residents visit our woods. There were a total of 37 birds of 18 species including 2 Great-crested Flycatchers as well as the Great-blue Heron that checks out the creek bed about twice each week. Not seen were the Scarlet Tanagers that are residents for the first time in the 14 years that we live here, or the Phoebe that breeds under the neighbor's balcony and of which the first fledgling sat on the feeder pole this morning (6-23-14).
The tanagers became more frequent visitors as May wore on. The male often sang in the oaks right above the house and on the 28th he was "flycatching" near 3 Baltimore Orioles and the next day both the female and male were foraging in the trees above the creek. As I was watching them a Willow Flycatcher was in the lower branches, probably the same one that appeared irregularly since the 16th and more surprising were, what to the wishful birder in me looked like, 2 Philadelphia Vireos. Pretty ironic as it had been a target bird for our Maine trip last year. But, of course, they were Warbling Vireos; they were still around on June 4 and 6 when one was feeding the other and Philadelpias would be well established on their northern breeding grounds. Also odd for June was the appearance of a male Yellow Warbler, that was busy foraging in the close hickories for several hours one afternoon and again the next morning. A visitor from the brushy creek bed?
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
the modest birder (21) 2013 year-list
As a sort of competitive joke I kept a year-list for 2013 to show my birding buddy how many birds could be seen without travelling to hotspots during a one day excursion from one's home or traditional vacation spot (Maine in August). And even with his Spring in Georgia, trips to Arizona and elsewhere, he did not reach my year total until mid-summer.
Actually I broke my parameter, for at the end of May we made a specific 10 day trip to places in Maine that are father away from our vacation location of Southport Island (see the entry "August in Maine"). That trip consisted of 2 days around Scarborough, 3 around Machias and 2 in Baxter State Park, with stops on the way to these places. Birdwise that trip was not bad with some 29 year birds and 4 "lifers." But the weather was uncooperative with one 4-day period of constant and sometimes pouring rain; our planned trip for Machias Island' s pelagics was cancelled. Most of the food was 1950s "family restaurant," but the tree meals that were not were pretty outstanding. As it turned out of the 303 birds on the list even 3 of the 4 lifers could have been seen in Southern Jersey or Delaware and 2 of them I actually saw during fall migration, only the Spruce Grouse being strictly a northern species. In August, however, we saw several pelagics on boat trips out of Boothbay.
The highlights of the May trip were the Black Terns at Belgrade, the Spruce Grouse that walked calmly across the road in front of our car in Baxter, the Red Phalarope that flew up the Machias River, seen from of our room, and the five different sparrows on the Kennebunk Plains where the Vesper and Grasshopper Sparrows were target birds and a Clay-colored a nice bonus.
Black Terns are regular fall migrants at Cape May and in Delaware, but their wheeling around above marsh reeds reminded me of the ponds in the meadows of my childhood when I would drift in my kayak among them. Other good memories, in spite of the icy winds were the many Yellow-rumped Warblers in breeding plumage darting among the vegetation at the edge of a pond below Mt. Kathadin that itself was impressive in its fresh snow cover that virtually hung below its cloud enveloped summit. Then there was the odd appearance of a Hawk Owl on top of a spruce along Rt. 95 just before the Millinocket turn off, a flashback to our trip to Alaska.
The weather improved on our last day when we drove from Baxter to Freeport where we stopped for the night. The sky was blue and the sun was bright and as we had time we stopped off at Reid's Beach, one of our usual summer haunts. Colette took a long walk up and down the longer stretch of sand while I birded the park roads. She saw some Piping Plovers while from the height of the parking lot I watched several Common and two Red-throated Loons as well as the 4 usual terns. But most appreciated was the blue sky, the flat ocean and the spring-like temperature.
One of the consequences of the rainy weather, especially during the days we spent in the Moosehorn NWR, resulted from the fact that neither of us uses modern birding technology. This led to some experiences that were both challenging and amusing. If there was light rain we birded from the car with the window on the lee open. As I have hearing - and that only 70% - in my right ear only, this meant that Colette and I frequently changed seats to be able to lean out of the "dry" window, which was especially helpful if the bird was singing on that side. But one-ear hearing often creates an erroneous direction. If it poured the windows were opened for an inch or so. Identifying birdsong, especially of very high notes or from soft singers becomes an identification hazard. The upshot was that Colette tried to imitate sounds and cadences while I paged the likely warbler species in Peterson Warbler Guide and 2 other books. Slashing in the mud in a drenched trench coat was often the only way to establish a modicum of certainty.
I had a long time to watch the rain drench the rushing Machias River and among the things that went through my mind was the likelihood that the term "Godawfull weather" may have originated with some Christian farmer thinking about the biblical Deluge as his plough got stuck in the mud.
90% of the birds on the list birds posed fewer problems as we saw them in our regular haunts. Nearly all the ducks came in the first two months. A King eider appeared at Cape May but for the Common one we had to wait for Maine. The odd one out was an Eurasian Teal in Cape May on 3 March. An Eared Grebe hung around Indian River Inlet, Del. in February and a Red-necked appeared in Wildwood in April. Brown Pelicans regularly occur during the fall, but a White was in Bombay Hook NWR, Del. on 9/19. Least Bitterns were regular at Bombay, but I did not find one until Sept. 6. In that month there was also an invasion of White Ibis in Delaware and I saw several on that Sept. 6 trip when I saw also the only Mississippi Kite of the year though there had been several of them in May and June in New Jersey.
A rare find among the shorebirds were the Lapwings in NJ (for which we made a slight detour on the way home from Cape May) on March 10. Sand-hill Cranes had been reported at that location also, but we missed it and it remained elusive throughout the year. Both Godwits are regular at Bombay Hook, but a Buff-breasted Sandpiper was a real find along Rte 9 near Bombay Hook where it remained for more than a week and attracted many viewers. Because of our Maine trip we missed the Knots on their Delaware Bay stop-over, but some turned up in Delaware and NJ in the Fall.
Among the gulls etc. we saw 2 Sandwich Terns over the Hereford Inlet in Stone Harbor, a Long-tailed Jaeger and a Parasitic Jaeger on the beach at Cape May on 9/14 and 9/24 respectively. As we rarely make specific target trips, owls are always a rare find. In 2013 we saw 5 of them, a Snowy as one of the much reported invasion on 12/5, a Barred on 3/23 off Rte 9, a Screech on 12/22 at Bombay and a Great Horned on 5/16 also at Bombay. A Chuck-will's widow was a "lifer" on Sept. 6 when we nearly drove over it on a unpaved road of Rte 9. It only flew away when I got out to see whether it was alive.
Sometimes a new bird appears in our garden (which is on the edge of a wood transected by a vernal creek), this year it was a Red-headed Woodpecker on 4/27. I saw 2 rare flycatchers, an Olive-sided on 6/26 in the Cape May State Park and a Western Kingbird on 9/17 along Rte 9 (and another on 12/5 in Cape Henlopen St. Pk. in Del).
It's obvious by now that Rte 9 in Delaware is part of our normal birding spots, specifically the stretch from Odessa to Bombay Hk. NWR. and its side roads. It goes by Taylor's Gut and the Woodland WMA and some of its side roads go through blocks old forest. It's rare that we don't find some 10 species on a Spring or Fall trip and once in a while we hit a bonanza. Such was the case on May 16 when in the space of 50 yards along a side road with a thick hedgerow across from a brush-filled high forest there was a "fall out" of some fifty birds which were a pleasure to watch as they did not appear to move on and occasionally flipped across the road back and forth. My oldest US friend, usually very matter of fact if not phlegmatic, became very engaged pursuing each specie until he had a sure identification:
"That's a Yellow-throated Vireo" or "there's a Blue-headed" or "See that Summer Tanager"or "Did you get that Kentucky Warbler" or" this must be a Bay-breasted."
I also had my eyes on some Blackpolls that, confusingly, flitted in the low brush were several Black and Whites were gleaning the bark of the spring refurbished branches. When the excitement ebbed we had identified 14 species. A local lady, walking her dogs had stopped to watch us remarking: "They have been there all morning."
And as if to celebrate an Orchard Oriole and a Scarlet Tanager began to sing, the one in the top of the hedgerow and the other in a high beech.
Such "fall outs" occur more frequently during Fall migration for which Cape May has become famous, but even in our garden on a good day there may be several birds of up to seventeen species. One such fall-out occurred on 9/24 when I saw some twenty birders spying the hedgerow on the north-east side of Lily Lake in West Cape May. The number of Warblers was so large and their movement so nervous that identification became a group effort. The only new Warbler of the year that I saw was a Wilson's, but earlier that morning, at Highbee Beach, I had good looks at a Philadelphia Vireo, one of the target birds on our May trip to Baxter State Park in Maine.
Bird #300 was a Greater White-fronted Goose that was hanging around in Bombay Hook. I saw it on a regular Delaware trip on October 24. The next two months only brought two more species, though if I had made special efforts I could have added several more.
To some extent keeping the list satisfied my curiosity about how many species we could see without becoming "chasers." In comparison with localized lists of full-time birders ours was not a bad result. Yet, I wont be keeping another one simply to avoid the "pressure of the count" which, especially towards the end, took away from the pleasure of birding and its unsuspected surprises such as that of the hedgerow off Rte 9 on May 16.
ADDENDUM: Contrary to the last paragraph, I used the 2013 list for 2014 also and came up with an even 300 (5 less than 2013), of which 18 were birds not seen in 2013, thus in 2013 we saw 23 birds not seen in 2014. Some of the 2014 birds were pelagics, including an Audubon Shearwater, on the annual Maine puffin trip and the whale tour (that came after a bad storm that also brought a Mississippi Kite to Southport Island), but most were Cape May vagrants, including a Smith's Longspur (a lifer) one of the target birds that we missed on our Alaska trip; also a Vermillion Flycatcher and a Western Tanager that were watched by many people as we drove by the same road at different times and a Whiskered Tern that was around for 10 days on the pond in front of the Hawkwatch. For none of the 18 we made a special trip though some took a bit of repeat searching.
Actually I broke my parameter, for at the end of May we made a specific 10 day trip to places in Maine that are father away from our vacation location of Southport Island (see the entry "August in Maine"). That trip consisted of 2 days around Scarborough, 3 around Machias and 2 in Baxter State Park, with stops on the way to these places. Birdwise that trip was not bad with some 29 year birds and 4 "lifers." But the weather was uncooperative with one 4-day period of constant and sometimes pouring rain; our planned trip for Machias Island' s pelagics was cancelled. Most of the food was 1950s "family restaurant," but the tree meals that were not were pretty outstanding. As it turned out of the 303 birds on the list even 3 of the 4 lifers could have been seen in Southern Jersey or Delaware and 2 of them I actually saw during fall migration, only the Spruce Grouse being strictly a northern species. In August, however, we saw several pelagics on boat trips out of Boothbay.
The highlights of the May trip were the Black Terns at Belgrade, the Spruce Grouse that walked calmly across the road in front of our car in Baxter, the Red Phalarope that flew up the Machias River, seen from of our room, and the five different sparrows on the Kennebunk Plains where the Vesper and Grasshopper Sparrows were target birds and a Clay-colored a nice bonus.
Black Terns are regular fall migrants at Cape May and in Delaware, but their wheeling around above marsh reeds reminded me of the ponds in the meadows of my childhood when I would drift in my kayak among them. Other good memories, in spite of the icy winds were the many Yellow-rumped Warblers in breeding plumage darting among the vegetation at the edge of a pond below Mt. Kathadin that itself was impressive in its fresh snow cover that virtually hung below its cloud enveloped summit. Then there was the odd appearance of a Hawk Owl on top of a spruce along Rt. 95 just before the Millinocket turn off, a flashback to our trip to Alaska.
The weather improved on our last day when we drove from Baxter to Freeport where we stopped for the night. The sky was blue and the sun was bright and as we had time we stopped off at Reid's Beach, one of our usual summer haunts. Colette took a long walk up and down the longer stretch of sand while I birded the park roads. She saw some Piping Plovers while from the height of the parking lot I watched several Common and two Red-throated Loons as well as the 4 usual terns. But most appreciated was the blue sky, the flat ocean and the spring-like temperature.
One of the consequences of the rainy weather, especially during the days we spent in the Moosehorn NWR, resulted from the fact that neither of us uses modern birding technology. This led to some experiences that were both challenging and amusing. If there was light rain we birded from the car with the window on the lee open. As I have hearing - and that only 70% - in my right ear only, this meant that Colette and I frequently changed seats to be able to lean out of the "dry" window, which was especially helpful if the bird was singing on that side. But one-ear hearing often creates an erroneous direction. If it poured the windows were opened for an inch or so. Identifying birdsong, especially of very high notes or from soft singers becomes an identification hazard. The upshot was that Colette tried to imitate sounds and cadences while I paged the likely warbler species in Peterson Warbler Guide and 2 other books. Slashing in the mud in a drenched trench coat was often the only way to establish a modicum of certainty.
I had a long time to watch the rain drench the rushing Machias River and among the things that went through my mind was the likelihood that the term "Godawfull weather" may have originated with some Christian farmer thinking about the biblical Deluge as his plough got stuck in the mud.
90% of the birds on the list birds posed fewer problems as we saw them in our regular haunts. Nearly all the ducks came in the first two months. A King eider appeared at Cape May but for the Common one we had to wait for Maine. The odd one out was an Eurasian Teal in Cape May on 3 March. An Eared Grebe hung around Indian River Inlet, Del. in February and a Red-necked appeared in Wildwood in April. Brown Pelicans regularly occur during the fall, but a White was in Bombay Hook NWR, Del. on 9/19. Least Bitterns were regular at Bombay, but I did not find one until Sept. 6. In that month there was also an invasion of White Ibis in Delaware and I saw several on that Sept. 6 trip when I saw also the only Mississippi Kite of the year though there had been several of them in May and June in New Jersey.
A rare find among the shorebirds were the Lapwings in NJ (for which we made a slight detour on the way home from Cape May) on March 10. Sand-hill Cranes had been reported at that location also, but we missed it and it remained elusive throughout the year. Both Godwits are regular at Bombay Hook, but a Buff-breasted Sandpiper was a real find along Rte 9 near Bombay Hook where it remained for more than a week and attracted many viewers. Because of our Maine trip we missed the Knots on their Delaware Bay stop-over, but some turned up in Delaware and NJ in the Fall.
Among the gulls etc. we saw 2 Sandwich Terns over the Hereford Inlet in Stone Harbor, a Long-tailed Jaeger and a Parasitic Jaeger on the beach at Cape May on 9/14 and 9/24 respectively. As we rarely make specific target trips, owls are always a rare find. In 2013 we saw 5 of them, a Snowy as one of the much reported invasion on 12/5, a Barred on 3/23 off Rte 9, a Screech on 12/22 at Bombay and a Great Horned on 5/16 also at Bombay. A Chuck-will's widow was a "lifer" on Sept. 6 when we nearly drove over it on a unpaved road of Rte 9. It only flew away when I got out to see whether it was alive.
Sometimes a new bird appears in our garden (which is on the edge of a wood transected by a vernal creek), this year it was a Red-headed Woodpecker on 4/27. I saw 2 rare flycatchers, an Olive-sided on 6/26 in the Cape May State Park and a Western Kingbird on 9/17 along Rte 9 (and another on 12/5 in Cape Henlopen St. Pk. in Del).
It's obvious by now that Rte 9 in Delaware is part of our normal birding spots, specifically the stretch from Odessa to Bombay Hk. NWR. and its side roads. It goes by Taylor's Gut and the Woodland WMA and some of its side roads go through blocks old forest. It's rare that we don't find some 10 species on a Spring or Fall trip and once in a while we hit a bonanza. Such was the case on May 16 when in the space of 50 yards along a side road with a thick hedgerow across from a brush-filled high forest there was a "fall out" of some fifty birds which were a pleasure to watch as they did not appear to move on and occasionally flipped across the road back and forth. My oldest US friend, usually very matter of fact if not phlegmatic, became very engaged pursuing each specie until he had a sure identification:
"That's a Yellow-throated Vireo" or "there's a Blue-headed" or "See that Summer Tanager"or "Did you get that Kentucky Warbler" or" this must be a Bay-breasted."
I also had my eyes on some Blackpolls that, confusingly, flitted in the low brush were several Black and Whites were gleaning the bark of the spring refurbished branches. When the excitement ebbed we had identified 14 species. A local lady, walking her dogs had stopped to watch us remarking: "They have been there all morning."
And as if to celebrate an Orchard Oriole and a Scarlet Tanager began to sing, the one in the top of the hedgerow and the other in a high beech.
Such "fall outs" occur more frequently during Fall migration for which Cape May has become famous, but even in our garden on a good day there may be several birds of up to seventeen species. One such fall-out occurred on 9/24 when I saw some twenty birders spying the hedgerow on the north-east side of Lily Lake in West Cape May. The number of Warblers was so large and their movement so nervous that identification became a group effort. The only new Warbler of the year that I saw was a Wilson's, but earlier that morning, at Highbee Beach, I had good looks at a Philadelphia Vireo, one of the target birds on our May trip to Baxter State Park in Maine.
Bird #300 was a Greater White-fronted Goose that was hanging around in Bombay Hook. I saw it on a regular Delaware trip on October 24. The next two months only brought two more species, though if I had made special efforts I could have added several more.
To some extent keeping the list satisfied my curiosity about how many species we could see without becoming "chasers." In comparison with localized lists of full-time birders ours was not a bad result. Yet, I wont be keeping another one simply to avoid the "pressure of the count" which, especially towards the end, took away from the pleasure of birding and its unsuspected surprises such as that of the hedgerow off Rte 9 on May 16.
ADDENDUM: Contrary to the last paragraph, I used the 2013 list for 2014 also and came up with an even 300 (5 less than 2013), of which 18 were birds not seen in 2013, thus in 2013 we saw 23 birds not seen in 2014. Some of the 2014 birds were pelagics, including an Audubon Shearwater, on the annual Maine puffin trip and the whale tour (that came after a bad storm that also brought a Mississippi Kite to Southport Island), but most were Cape May vagrants, including a Smith's Longspur (a lifer) one of the target birds that we missed on our Alaska trip; also a Vermillion Flycatcher and a Western Tanager that were watched by many people as we drove by the same road at different times and a Whiskered Tern that was around for 10 days on the pond in front of the Hawkwatch. For none of the 18 we made a special trip though some took a bit of repeat searching.
Monday, February 24, 2014
the modest birder (20) winter 13-14
This is a miserable winter. The long term forecast has frost and snow showers through March 10.
Until the week of Thanksgiving everything was pretty normal, then on Monday11/25 the temp. was 14-29. This was followed by more normal temps but 0n 12/8 it was in the 20s with snow and from then on it remained winter. All the likely winter residents were present, including three white crowned sparrows (1 juv.) which turned out to be the only rare visitors. In Dec. my jobber removed snow three times (once for 6"). In January he came four times as he did this month (8" once) so far. There were few days of 40 degrees and most days the thermometer remained stuck in the 20s with some lows of -3!!. One morning, after icy rain overnight, even the branches seemed to be weeping as some of them broke under the weight of their tears.
We went birding in Delaware or New Jersey only three times when the weather was bearable for a few days. It was surprising how many fields were bare while we had still 6" of hard snow everywhere. But even there winter affected the birds as see ducks flocked together in large rafts along the coast and others appeared in the warmer waters of the bays.
Since the December snows the resident sapsuckers, flickers and Carolina wrens have been absent. There are only two, perhaps three red-belly woodpeckers; only one regular hairy (some days there are two), the regular compliment of small and large downies, but only one white-breasted nuthatch and brown creeper. Last year there were two regular hairies, three or four nuthatches and three creepers. The numbers of other species are also down. In stead of up to thirty mourning doves there are 4 to 6 and some days none at all (one ended up, frozen stiff, in the garage) and there are at most 10 juncos rather than the occasional 50 or so that would forage among the weeds down the slope. On the other hand there have been more goldfinches, up to eight which last year was the number in March. Most surprising is the number of white-throated sparrows that varies between 12 and 16 (only 5 of them adults). There are only two pairs of house finches which normally outnumber the gold finches in January and February and this year we have at least two pairs of Carolina chickadees in stead of three odd birds.
A surprise was the fact that when a sapsucker appeared, it was only for a day to forage in the trees near the creek without coming to the suet which, every other year, was a steady source of food on warm days as well as cold. One Carolina wren hang around for 3 days in February and no flicker put in an appearance at all.
On the other hand we have had a flock of perhaps 20 cowbirds (2 females) on several separate days, a flock of 40+ grackles( 6 females) 3 times at week intervals and one rusty black bird two different times. Each of these flocks stayed until the feeders were empty and the larger stuff in the snow was gone. Where they went each time remains a puzzle as I haven't met with them on my travels around.
A bit bizarre was the frequent appearance of one or two robins that sat in the trees. All our berries have long since been eaten, even those of the holly although they do not seem very attractive to robins, for near the post office there is one glorious tree laden with bright red berries every winter while there is also a small flock of robins hanging around.
The raptors were probably the least affected by the weather, though an adult male and a juvenile sharpshin occasional raid the feeders whereas the last few winters no shapshins were around after December. Each winter we have a female cooper's, but this time there's also an adult male. Each of the shapshins and the cooper's a come around on different days and each would make several appearances during the day. They were, as usual, not very successful: the male sharpshin caught a small bird twice, each time flying away with its back toward me; the female cooper's caught s starling one time and soon thereafter fewer starlings haunted the feeders, i.e. 3 or four instead of up to 11.
There were no redtails until 2 weeks ago when the resident pair from the adjacent farm returned to their wind damaged nest. The first days they patrolled along the tree tops and began circling higher and higher, but now they have become scarce as they must roam farther afield for prey. Last week I shot three squirrels off the feeders in on hour. One was lame in a hind leg, it came back the next day, but appears gone. One died below the suet tree. Within the hour one of the redtails tore much of it apart before flying to a nearby tree. Not long after the other came and finished the job. The 3d squirrel died below the spruce and lay there for 2 nights, the local raccoon has likely made off with it, though the surface of the snow is so hard that no clear tracks were visible. No other squirrels have crossed the creek so far.
Yesterday I ordered the seeds for spring planting, always a gesture of hope, but I have difficulty being optimistic.
Perhaps because the storm predicted for March 2-3 passed to the south of us, a male cardinal was "feeding" a female on the feeder pole. At the beginning of this winter we had a low of 2 males and one female, but suddenly in Febr, there were one morning 5 males and 4 females all at once on the feeders and on nearby branches. Now there are mostly 4 males and three females.
Until the week of Thanksgiving everything was pretty normal, then on Monday11/25 the temp. was 14-29. This was followed by more normal temps but 0n 12/8 it was in the 20s with snow and from then on it remained winter. All the likely winter residents were present, including three white crowned sparrows (1 juv.) which turned out to be the only rare visitors. In Dec. my jobber removed snow three times (once for 6"). In January he came four times as he did this month (8" once) so far. There were few days of 40 degrees and most days the thermometer remained stuck in the 20s with some lows of -3!!. One morning, after icy rain overnight, even the branches seemed to be weeping as some of them broke under the weight of their tears.
We went birding in Delaware or New Jersey only three times when the weather was bearable for a few days. It was surprising how many fields were bare while we had still 6" of hard snow everywhere. But even there winter affected the birds as see ducks flocked together in large rafts along the coast and others appeared in the warmer waters of the bays.
Since the December snows the resident sapsuckers, flickers and Carolina wrens have been absent. There are only two, perhaps three red-belly woodpeckers; only one regular hairy (some days there are two), the regular compliment of small and large downies, but only one white-breasted nuthatch and brown creeper. Last year there were two regular hairies, three or four nuthatches and three creepers. The numbers of other species are also down. In stead of up to thirty mourning doves there are 4 to 6 and some days none at all (one ended up, frozen stiff, in the garage) and there are at most 10 juncos rather than the occasional 50 or so that would forage among the weeds down the slope. On the other hand there have been more goldfinches, up to eight which last year was the number in March. Most surprising is the number of white-throated sparrows that varies between 12 and 16 (only 5 of them adults). There are only two pairs of house finches which normally outnumber the gold finches in January and February and this year we have at least two pairs of Carolina chickadees in stead of three odd birds.
A surprise was the fact that when a sapsucker appeared, it was only for a day to forage in the trees near the creek without coming to the suet which, every other year, was a steady source of food on warm days as well as cold. One Carolina wren hang around for 3 days in February and no flicker put in an appearance at all.
On the other hand we have had a flock of perhaps 20 cowbirds (2 females) on several separate days, a flock of 40+ grackles( 6 females) 3 times at week intervals and one rusty black bird two different times. Each of these flocks stayed until the feeders were empty and the larger stuff in the snow was gone. Where they went each time remains a puzzle as I haven't met with them on my travels around.
A bit bizarre was the frequent appearance of one or two robins that sat in the trees. All our berries have long since been eaten, even those of the holly although they do not seem very attractive to robins, for near the post office there is one glorious tree laden with bright red berries every winter while there is also a small flock of robins hanging around.
The raptors were probably the least affected by the weather, though an adult male and a juvenile sharpshin occasional raid the feeders whereas the last few winters no shapshins were around after December. Each winter we have a female cooper's, but this time there's also an adult male. Each of the shapshins and the cooper's a come around on different days and each would make several appearances during the day. They were, as usual, not very successful: the male sharpshin caught a small bird twice, each time flying away with its back toward me; the female cooper's caught s starling one time and soon thereafter fewer starlings haunted the feeders, i.e. 3 or four instead of up to 11.
There were no redtails until 2 weeks ago when the resident pair from the adjacent farm returned to their wind damaged nest. The first days they patrolled along the tree tops and began circling higher and higher, but now they have become scarce as they must roam farther afield for prey. Last week I shot three squirrels off the feeders in on hour. One was lame in a hind leg, it came back the next day, but appears gone. One died below the suet tree. Within the hour one of the redtails tore much of it apart before flying to a nearby tree. Not long after the other came and finished the job. The 3d squirrel died below the spruce and lay there for 2 nights, the local raccoon has likely made off with it, though the surface of the snow is so hard that no clear tracks were visible. No other squirrels have crossed the creek so far.
Yesterday I ordered the seeds for spring planting, always a gesture of hope, but I have difficulty being optimistic.
Perhaps because the storm predicted for March 2-3 passed to the south of us, a male cardinal was "feeding" a female on the feeder pole. At the beginning of this winter we had a low of 2 males and one female, but suddenly in Febr, there were one morning 5 males and 4 females all at once on the feeders and on nearby branches. Now there are mostly 4 males and three females.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
life along the delaware bay
Lawrence Niles, et. al., Life Along the Delaware Bay. Cape May, Gateway To a Million Shorebirds. Rutgers U.P., New Brunswick NJ., 2012. Pp.153.
What we have here is a handsome coffee table book, beautifully illustrated with more pictures than text, about the importance of the Delaware Bay as a stop-over place for a number of shorebirds, among which the threatened Red Knot receives most attention. Larry Niles is well known for his work on the Knot and is the author of several previous publications (see the post The modest birder # 18).
After a quick glance at the town of Cape May and its Hawk Watching platform, a brief mention of the NJ Audubon's counting of the Fall migration of raptors and song birds, the authors (their individual contributions are not clearly identified) jump into media res with the following chapters on the importance of the horseshoe crab whose eggs make the Bay "the most important [shorebird] stopover in the Western Hemisphere" before giving a chapter each to the Knot, the Ruddy Turnstone and Sanderlings. The remaining shorebirds are lumped together in a chapter on "mud birds," among which the Semi-palmated Sandpiper is (as in the overall numbers) the most numerous. A separate chapter deals with gulls, the great competitors for the crab eggs; it is followed by a chapter on the Bay's marshes and a final chapter discusses the threats to its ecology.
It should be clear that this is a book for more than an occasional visitor to Cape May. On the other hand, even a casual nature lover will find much of interest while the non-specialist birder cannot easily find so much interesting and important information. I particularly like the several maps and graphs as well as the pictures (pp. 33ff., 45 and elsewhere) showing the actual work of the many volunteers who capture the birds, note their vital statistics before placing the, sometimes several, bands on their legs before releasing them.
A world map on p. 44 shows the location and migration routes of the nominate species (Calidris canutus canutus) and the five subspecies of Knots, two of which, the C.c. Rufa and the C.c. Roselaari) occur in North America and of these the Eastern species, the Red Knot, accounts for the smallest population. By the numbers, Knots are actually mostly European birds. Although the fate of the Red Knot (and the horseshoe crab) is the focus of Niles' research, the graph on p. 37, shows that the Rufa Knot only accounts for 9% of all the shorebirds using the Bay during their Spring migration (during the Southward migration the Bay is unimportant), Semi-palmated Sandpipers and Dunlin together making up 66% (in the fall they are the majority also). But the apparently declining population of the Red Knot is a significant indicator of the health of its various habitats, the Arctic where it breeds, the coasts of South America and in particular Southern Argentina where it winters and perhaps of greatest significance the Delaware Bay where it refuels on the way north with enough energy reserves for successful procreation.
From remarks while discussing other species it becomes clear that shorebird populations globally face declines and this is true of all the Knot groups, independent of the decline of the horseshoe crabs. The causes of these declines are rarely as clear as in the case of the Red Knot with its temporary but all important dependence on one food. Such birds as the Sanderling, which is only an opportunistic feeder of crab eggs and more numerous on sandy beaches anywhere than in the Bay seems to be holding its own better than other species as for ex. the Semi-palmated Sandpiper (one of the book's "mud-birds" and also only an opportunistic feeder of the eggs (the crabs preferring sandy beaches rather than mudflats as is clearly evident in such places as Bombay Hook in Delaware). Such drastic declines as that of the Phalaropes in the Bay of Fundy, far from metropolitan polluting areas, remains a puzzle. And while the horseshoe crab-Red Knot relationship provides a clear ecological model, the factors discussed in the last chapter on such environmental threats as rising sea levels should be studied with as much immediacy.
Yet, while we must applaud Niles and his collaborators for their contributions to our knowledge, the book has a few problems. For ex. the Google map (p. 46) of the Western Hemisphere showing the migration route of one known Rufa, gives the distances in kilometers while the explanation uses miles, which would be ok if the arithmetic were correct: the flight north from Uruguay is given on the map as 8000km in 6 days but described as 3,000 miles, while it is more likely 5,000 miles, one mile being approx. 1.6 km (the distance being easily obtainable for Google). And while we are talking about Uruguay, there was a (still unexplained?) kill of some 2,000 Knots about a decade ago on their stopover place there. Meanwhile there is some encouraging news: At the end of Sept. 2013 the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed "endangered species" status for the Red Knot and since 2012 there's a managements plan that ties the horseshoe crab fishery explicitly to the Knot's recovery.
A, to me, more significant problem, for which we probably must blame the Rutgers University Press are the book's misleading titles that reveal an advertising mentality aiming at the "hype" rather than at accurate information. As a "bird book" it provides only a small, if significant, slice of "life" along the Delaware Bay. The subtitle clearly exploits the fame of Cape May as a resort and a remarkable birding spot, though among the birds, shorebird migration in the number of 1,000,000 strikes me, a 30+ year birder in southern Jersey as a gross misstatement. And, as results from the authors' own data, half a million in the month of May when there is the greatest concentration, is a better "ballpark figure." And considering the importance of the Delaware side of the Bay, it could with better justification, have been called "Lewis, the Gateway, etc." But why, Cape May having been put forward, is there such slight mention of important birding at other times of the year when "Life along the shore" is often as exciting s the month of May. Or why is the work of the Cape May Bird Observatory passed over by a slimple reference to the counting of Fall migration done by NJ Audubon.
Which brings me to a rather unrelated fact though it seems worth mentioning. Most of the documentary photography is by Jan van der Kam, a fellow Dutchman, with whose jealous making work, I have long been familiar, most recently through his work in a Dutch coffee table book simply called Shorebirds (whose scientific standards are a model). Van der Kam, a professional who seems to do nothing but shorebirds in their habitats, I am still pretty amazed by the occasionally artistic, rather than merely documentary shots that are included also in this book. Yet, through the CMBO blog "View from the Field," I have come to realize the possibilities of what a person with a sense of photographic "view" (and a knowledge of bird behavior) can do with modern equipment.
What we have here is a handsome coffee table book, beautifully illustrated with more pictures than text, about the importance of the Delaware Bay as a stop-over place for a number of shorebirds, among which the threatened Red Knot receives most attention. Larry Niles is well known for his work on the Knot and is the author of several previous publications (see the post The modest birder # 18).
After a quick glance at the town of Cape May and its Hawk Watching platform, a brief mention of the NJ Audubon's counting of the Fall migration of raptors and song birds, the authors (their individual contributions are not clearly identified) jump into media res with the following chapters on the importance of the horseshoe crab whose eggs make the Bay "the most important [shorebird] stopover in the Western Hemisphere" before giving a chapter each to the Knot, the Ruddy Turnstone and Sanderlings. The remaining shorebirds are lumped together in a chapter on "mud birds," among which the Semi-palmated Sandpiper is (as in the overall numbers) the most numerous. A separate chapter deals with gulls, the great competitors for the crab eggs; it is followed by a chapter on the Bay's marshes and a final chapter discusses the threats to its ecology.
It should be clear that this is a book for more than an occasional visitor to Cape May. On the other hand, even a casual nature lover will find much of interest while the non-specialist birder cannot easily find so much interesting and important information. I particularly like the several maps and graphs as well as the pictures (pp. 33ff., 45 and elsewhere) showing the actual work of the many volunteers who capture the birds, note their vital statistics before placing the, sometimes several, bands on their legs before releasing them.
A world map on p. 44 shows the location and migration routes of the nominate species (Calidris canutus canutus) and the five subspecies of Knots, two of which, the C.c. Rufa and the C.c. Roselaari) occur in North America and of these the Eastern species, the Red Knot, accounts for the smallest population. By the numbers, Knots are actually mostly European birds. Although the fate of the Red Knot (and the horseshoe crab) is the focus of Niles' research, the graph on p. 37, shows that the Rufa Knot only accounts for 9% of all the shorebirds using the Bay during their Spring migration (during the Southward migration the Bay is unimportant), Semi-palmated Sandpipers and Dunlin together making up 66% (in the fall they are the majority also). But the apparently declining population of the Red Knot is a significant indicator of the health of its various habitats, the Arctic where it breeds, the coasts of South America and in particular Southern Argentina where it winters and perhaps of greatest significance the Delaware Bay where it refuels on the way north with enough energy reserves for successful procreation.
From remarks while discussing other species it becomes clear that shorebird populations globally face declines and this is true of all the Knot groups, independent of the decline of the horseshoe crabs. The causes of these declines are rarely as clear as in the case of the Red Knot with its temporary but all important dependence on one food. Such birds as the Sanderling, which is only an opportunistic feeder of crab eggs and more numerous on sandy beaches anywhere than in the Bay seems to be holding its own better than other species as for ex. the Semi-palmated Sandpiper (one of the book's "mud-birds" and also only an opportunistic feeder of the eggs (the crabs preferring sandy beaches rather than mudflats as is clearly evident in such places as Bombay Hook in Delaware). Such drastic declines as that of the Phalaropes in the Bay of Fundy, far from metropolitan polluting areas, remains a puzzle. And while the horseshoe crab-Red Knot relationship provides a clear ecological model, the factors discussed in the last chapter on such environmental threats as rising sea levels should be studied with as much immediacy.
Yet, while we must applaud Niles and his collaborators for their contributions to our knowledge, the book has a few problems. For ex. the Google map (p. 46) of the Western Hemisphere showing the migration route of one known Rufa, gives the distances in kilometers while the explanation uses miles, which would be ok if the arithmetic were correct: the flight north from Uruguay is given on the map as 8000km in 6 days but described as 3,000 miles, while it is more likely 5,000 miles, one mile being approx. 1.6 km (the distance being easily obtainable for Google). And while we are talking about Uruguay, there was a (still unexplained?) kill of some 2,000 Knots about a decade ago on their stopover place there. Meanwhile there is some encouraging news: At the end of Sept. 2013 the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed "endangered species" status for the Red Knot and since 2012 there's a managements plan that ties the horseshoe crab fishery explicitly to the Knot's recovery.
A, to me, more significant problem, for which we probably must blame the Rutgers University Press are the book's misleading titles that reveal an advertising mentality aiming at the "hype" rather than at accurate information. As a "bird book" it provides only a small, if significant, slice of "life" along the Delaware Bay. The subtitle clearly exploits the fame of Cape May as a resort and a remarkable birding spot, though among the birds, shorebird migration in the number of 1,000,000 strikes me, a 30+ year birder in southern Jersey as a gross misstatement. And, as results from the authors' own data, half a million in the month of May when there is the greatest concentration, is a better "ballpark figure." And considering the importance of the Delaware side of the Bay, it could with better justification, have been called "Lewis, the Gateway, etc." But why, Cape May having been put forward, is there such slight mention of important birding at other times of the year when "Life along the shore" is often as exciting s the month of May. Or why is the work of the Cape May Bird Observatory passed over by a slimple reference to the counting of Fall migration done by NJ Audubon.
Which brings me to a rather unrelated fact though it seems worth mentioning. Most of the documentary photography is by Jan van der Kam, a fellow Dutchman, with whose jealous making work, I have long been familiar, most recently through his work in a Dutch coffee table book simply called Shorebirds (whose scientific standards are a model). Van der Kam, a professional who seems to do nothing but shorebirds in their habitats, I am still pretty amazed by the occasionally artistic, rather than merely documentary shots that are included also in this book. Yet, through the CMBO blog "View from the Field," I have come to realize the possibilities of what a person with a sense of photographic "view" (and a knowledge of bird behavior) can do with modern equipment.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
on wine (9) throwbacks in Maine
Calvin Trillin tends to refer to the less sophisticated foodies of the past as the "beef Stroganov types." When it comes to wine I think back to the "Matteus days" of the 1960s when the flat bottles made very good candle holders. But Colette and I were recently reminded that there then were other choices, her former husband preferring California jug wines and several of our friends drinking Almaden because the bottles could do long service as wine carafes. The occasion occurred on our birding trip to Maine at the end of last May and I was reminded of our poor to middling eating experiences when I checked my diary for the precise date of seeing the Spruce grouse (which for me was a "lifer").
I hesitate to name the restaurant, at the entrance to a former Down East sardine harbor, because the owner who served us was a kindhearted elderly woman who told us with some pride that she and her husband, the cook, had started the restaurant in their 20s when an uncle gave them a loan (actually a gift as it turned out). Anyway, the menu and (unfortunately) the cooking apparently had remained the same all these years. Colette had a boiled lobster which can't be easily spoiled unless it's overcooked, which it was. Maybe it had something to do with the time it took to prepare my frozen (and thin) pork cutlets. The veggies come from cans or frozen packages. Even the blueberry pie wasn't made from scratch, which we find (after decades of Maine summers) a rare find. The wine "list" had "red, rose, white from 3 California growers in 2 "carafe" sizes. One of these growers was Almaden and the "carafe was a recycled Almaden bottle. On the whole it was a typical 1960s "family restaurant" experience. The only other eating out event was at a Chinese place that turned out to be equally behind the times, but fortunately they had bottled beer.
We decided to have all our other meals in our rooms with food from the local Hannefords. What has surprised us about that chain, even those in upscale tourist places, is their very large selection of California and other US wines and there relatively poor selection of French and Italian wines. But at least they have usually something drinkable. And we have found the occasional boutique delicatessen with a fine wine selection. This trip was no exception and Colette discovered a wine boutique when we were rained out in Machias and in need of something uplifting. It was also the 33d anniversary of our "non-marriage." Among the choices available the owner, a retired "gentleman" whose hobby was wine and that he now maintained to supplement his investment income, were several unfamiliar Champagnes of which one in particular was his own favorite. Colette brought if back, and a good choice it turned out to be. The notes in my diary read: "A remarkable non-vintage from Jean Vesselle in Bouzy. A Brut that was light, effervescent & without yeast. A "trouvaille, a donna nubile." At $44 it was better than any non-vintage in that range we occasional buy to celebrate. The bottle turned out the highlight of our trip even though we had a truly outstanding dinner at "Joseph by the Sea" in Old Orchard beach (which is otherwise a remarkably honky-tong place). We had Colette's favorite white, a Sancerre from the Chateau de Sancerre, a 2011 that turned out to be a very good year in several places in France. This bottle got marked in my diary, with the entire meal, as "up there with the best of our experiences."
Actually, when we returned for our customary "August in Maine" (on Southport Island) we found that some of the better (and expensive) restaurants had significantly improved their menu, including the preparation and well as presentation and their wine list. Thus the "Thistle Inn" in Boothbay Harbor featured several whites and reds from France and Italy (as well as better American ones), that included even a Cotes de Provence rose which Colette, with her Provencal background, appreciated.
The Inn is comparable to "Joseph by the Sea," but it lacks the view.
2011 was also a good year in Beaujolais and the Savoie (an area from which I have seen few, or any wines in the USA). But, as one of the hazards of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's choices, our local outlet featured as a "Manager's Choice" a "Savoie" 2011 from Aspremont. It's a light golden wine, which I used to buy from the local grower in St. Jean d'Arvey, above Chambery, when I lived there one summer when I was 21 or 2. I actually tended some vines for the old lady whose garden I kept and whose goats I retrieved every night before milking them. I first bought one bottle for old times' sake, but not only the memories made me go back to the store and by the remaining bottles (7).
What a pleasant drink it had remained and the stuff that the grower drank (see On Wine(8). By the way, our birding trip in Maine, netted, in spite of the persistent lousy weather, 129 species with 27 "first of year" birds and 4 "lifers." Good enough to overlook to forgettable meals.
I hesitate to name the restaurant, at the entrance to a former Down East sardine harbor, because the owner who served us was a kindhearted elderly woman who told us with some pride that she and her husband, the cook, had started the restaurant in their 20s when an uncle gave them a loan (actually a gift as it turned out). Anyway, the menu and (unfortunately) the cooking apparently had remained the same all these years. Colette had a boiled lobster which can't be easily spoiled unless it's overcooked, which it was. Maybe it had something to do with the time it took to prepare my frozen (and thin) pork cutlets. The veggies come from cans or frozen packages. Even the blueberry pie wasn't made from scratch, which we find (after decades of Maine summers) a rare find. The wine "list" had "red, rose, white from 3 California growers in 2 "carafe" sizes. One of these growers was Almaden and the "carafe was a recycled Almaden bottle. On the whole it was a typical 1960s "family restaurant" experience. The only other eating out event was at a Chinese place that turned out to be equally behind the times, but fortunately they had bottled beer.
We decided to have all our other meals in our rooms with food from the local Hannefords. What has surprised us about that chain, even those in upscale tourist places, is their very large selection of California and other US wines and there relatively poor selection of French and Italian wines. But at least they have usually something drinkable. And we have found the occasional boutique delicatessen with a fine wine selection. This trip was no exception and Colette discovered a wine boutique when we were rained out in Machias and in need of something uplifting. It was also the 33d anniversary of our "non-marriage." Among the choices available the owner, a retired "gentleman" whose hobby was wine and that he now maintained to supplement his investment income, were several unfamiliar Champagnes of which one in particular was his own favorite. Colette brought if back, and a good choice it turned out to be. The notes in my diary read: "A remarkable non-vintage from Jean Vesselle in Bouzy. A Brut that was light, effervescent & without yeast. A "trouvaille, a donna nubile." At $44 it was better than any non-vintage in that range we occasional buy to celebrate. The bottle turned out the highlight of our trip even though we had a truly outstanding dinner at "Joseph by the Sea" in Old Orchard beach (which is otherwise a remarkably honky-tong place). We had Colette's favorite white, a Sancerre from the Chateau de Sancerre, a 2011 that turned out to be a very good year in several places in France. This bottle got marked in my diary, with the entire meal, as "up there with the best of our experiences."
Actually, when we returned for our customary "August in Maine" (on Southport Island) we found that some of the better (and expensive) restaurants had significantly improved their menu, including the preparation and well as presentation and their wine list. Thus the "Thistle Inn" in Boothbay Harbor featured several whites and reds from France and Italy (as well as better American ones), that included even a Cotes de Provence rose which Colette, with her Provencal background, appreciated.
The Inn is comparable to "Joseph by the Sea," but it lacks the view.
2011 was also a good year in Beaujolais and the Savoie (an area from which I have seen few, or any wines in the USA). But, as one of the hazards of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board's choices, our local outlet featured as a "Manager's Choice" a "Savoie" 2011 from Aspremont. It's a light golden wine, which I used to buy from the local grower in St. Jean d'Arvey, above Chambery, when I lived there one summer when I was 21 or 2. I actually tended some vines for the old lady whose garden I kept and whose goats I retrieved every night before milking them. I first bought one bottle for old times' sake, but not only the memories made me go back to the store and by the remaining bottles (7).
What a pleasant drink it had remained and the stuff that the grower drank (see On Wine(8). By the way, our birding trip in Maine, netted, in spite of the persistent lousy weather, 129 species with 27 "first of year" birds and 4 "lifers." Good enough to overlook to forgettable meals.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
the modest birder (19) birds singing, etc.
February 2, 2012, 11.05 sunny, 40s: while cleaning the feeders, I heard a "whispered", husky song and after making it clearer by pressing my hearing aid, is sounded like a subdued House finch. about 10 mins with very short intervals. About 7 Housef. of which 4 males, came to the feeder as I watched from the bench.
later saw a Redbelly drumming.
2-9-12, 12.30+ sunny, 38: It is not exactly a song but today the two Redtails that began to occupy their nest on the adjacent farm along 113 two weeks ago, were soaring above the trees in ever wider and higher intersecting courtship circles while calling their repeated high-pitched cheeeeew. (nothing of the books' 'harsh" about it).
at 3pm there were also the clear tones of a Titmouse and the double note of the Carolina Wren.
2-16-12: because some blogs report frequent singing, I have taken to watching perched finches etc. but all of them appear closed mouthed.
2-22-12: 10.30am, 48: earlier there were three male Cardinals on and near the feeders, but as I replenished them one of them was singing down the creek, across the road, sustained for several minutes.
at 2, 56 degrees, went out to see if there were more singers. Forgot my hearing aid.
Later I went down to the creek and walked zigzag up and sat on the bench, but all was silent except for a Downy calling. (The 20 or so early species crocus I brought from Super House on the campus, have multiplied to more than a hundred down the slope, some even in the stone wall).
March 7: while waiting for a stray Broadtail Hummer to appear in a yard in Cape May Point, I heard a soft warble, pretty sustained, much like a Starling as a ventriloquist, but all I could find were Robins. But then, with only one ear functioning.... But it was a Robin after all, for at home, on 3/12, 2 Robins were singing, close to each other in the same tree, in the same sort of way, though louder and they interspersed it with the shrill alarm notes. The "song" was a series of stjilps with a few warbles, each series longer than the normal song.
March 9: a Song sparrow on a fence post in Stone Harbor singing loudly and turning in all directions. A lot of effort that was also clearly visible.
March 10: a male Housef. offering a seed from the feeder to a female. 2 Kestrels copulating in a tree on the edge of Wegman pkg lot.
March 12: a Carolina Wren singing by the creek.
March 13: This time for sure: a Starling singing and not as ventriloquist but with beak wide open for the high notes; an odd collection of picked up sounds but also a nice warble. The bird in full sun on the feeder post and like a modern singer all shiny in metallics, black, purple and even green as the wings vibrated.
March 14: it's like the old recipe for rabbit stew: If you want the hear the birds singing, first be outside (with your hearing aid)! Yesterday and today we were working on the garden (resp. 74 and 69 degrees with blue skies and calm). One or two Cardinals are singing most of the morning and one, farther away, this afternoon but not very long. The Carolina Wren comes to the feeders, but sings mostly by the creek and across the road. And a Titmouse was in great form high in the trees from left to right with about 10 minutes of its four high fluted notes. Underneath, very softly a brown creeper was trying out its one toned wheez line, with interruptions, for about a minute. I actually was surprised it was a Brown Creeper as for some reason I didn't expect this inconspicuous and discreet bird to make any sound. The Red bellied Woodp. was quarking a few times and then, farther off let go with its repeated ieng notes.
March 17: blue after a thick fog, 39 going up to 70. garden work: planting swiss chard seedlings and sowing a mix of lettuces, arugula etc. as well as Chinese peas. With birds singing: the Cardinals, but also in the jungle across the road, a White Throat, a House Finch and a Brown creeper. The forsythia is out also.
March 18: as we were reading on the front lawn in the afternoon sun (74 degrees) it sounded like spring. A Brown Creeper was whispering between examining the cracks in the oak bark in the hedgerow between us and the eastern neighbor, more than one Cardinal was singing, one of them overlaid by the flute of a Titmouse and the summer song of the Car. Wren. The more pleasant singer was the House Finch which did its three part line for about 20 minutes in the middle stories of the hickories; sitting nearly upright and in the sun it was so slender that it looked like a warbler but neither have I seen one here so far, nor did I recognize it as the song of a likely warbler: too much variation! But it moved out of the sun to show its colors.
March 19: Blue and 52 at 9.30. I was looking at BBC news with a check of the feeders. A half moulded Goldfinch was singing on top of the feeder post, its neck vibrating, beak fairly open for the high notes.
March 20: as I was working in the garden, at approx. 1-2pm (74 degrees, mostly sunny with high white clouds) a veritable concert all around (i.e. when I turned my hearing aid in any direction) there was a veritable concert. Both House and Gold finches (the latter also did their flight call while foraging on the branches); Juncos, Titmice and even a Chickadee (a first), several Cardinals, a Carolina Wren (almost "inside" my ear) and several woodpeckers with their serial calls, incl. one that sounded like a flicker, but I haven't seen one of those since last year.
March 21: 2 flickers high in an oak on a dead limb, one of them calling.
March 23: as we were leaving for a birding trip to Delaware, at 6.30am, a Robing was singing loudly an long as if it was territory announcement time. In Del. a singing Song, Field and Swamp Sparrow. We also heard three different Towhees calling.
March 25: 1st Towhee, male (on the feeder).
March 27: 1st Chipping Sparrow, 1 male only
April 1: grey and 49; the Towhee still alone, but sat on the feeder post and called.
April 3: 3 female Cardinal chasing each other thru the spruce and away while 1 male was feeding in the "covered bridge."
April 4: A male Redbelly gave a (not very sharp or high) roll and flew to a branch, soon to be followed by a female from the opposite direction. Copulation, after which the female flew to the brush by the creek and the male to the suet.
A male Cardinal peeled a seed and brought it to a female.
April 5: 2 Mourning Doves on the stone wall in a "parakeet act" before copulating
April 6: Sth jersey. On Jake's Landing Rd. 2 Yellow-throated and 1 Pine Warbler singing, but hard to locate and not only by me with my less than flexible neck. Then Marijke, my daughter, camping near the Dismal Swamp in NC sent me a picture of a Yellow-throated on a bare branch right in front of her. And she's not even Irish.
April 10: a Housefinch was singing softly while I was working in the gdn in the aft. A cool day with a chilly wind.
There were only 2 Bluejays in stead of the usual 3. They were courting and one brought something to the other.
Apparently the Redtails have abandoned their nest and they have not been around on their daily visits.
April 12: Copulating Cowbirds. Not what we need. But also a pair of the small downies, the feeding maneuver before copulation.
April 14: 5.30pm, 72, Car. Wren; Redb.wp. drumming, a flycatcher's 2 (or 3) not call, but I couldn't find it.
April 15:,33.30 pm. 82degr., Car. Wren, a Cardinal and a (Y. Runp?) Warbler. At 7.30 more singing: Towhee (sustained), 2 Cards, Titmouse, a Robin and one in constant alarm call, Redb. drumming.
April 16: 10-11am, 84 (went to 89!) Towhee, the Warbler, Cardinal, Song and Field Sp, Cowbird and a very loud que-arrk (of a Sapsucker?)
April 17: 70, like yesterday, but no que-arrk or Warbler, but songs of Car. Wren and the Redw. Blackb. that came to the feeder from time to time, was singing at the neighbors (why go the New Jersey?).
Appril 27: 60, very windy. We went to New Jersey and were on Jake's Landing Rd, by 9am. Some birds were singing, mostly intermittently, among them a White-eyed Vireo and a Warbling Vireo as well as the Yellow-throated and Pine Warblers that have been there for a while now. But even a Cardinal was singing only between foraging. At 3pm, on the way home, we drove up and down the dirt road in Belleplain in absolute silence; stopping to scan the trees, not one bird was detected though at home this is the time that they forage again and often sing.
May 1: 48-74, grey after rainy night. At 10.30 while working in the garden a real chorus of bird song: cardinal, Robin, Song Sparrow, Housefinch as well as a non-resident singer with 4-5 clear and laud melodious flutes like a Veery or a Swainson Thrush.
May 2: 50-51, some soft rain. At 9.30 a soft 2-note see-see, repeated a few times, a Black and White W.? At 10.30 a clear Housefinch; at 2.30 a clear Chipping Sparrow.
Last week the male Redb.wp. was foraging and flying off across the creek. Today both Redb. were foraging and flying off in the same direction, almost alternatively (they did so at least until May 27 when the leaves began to hide the tree trunks, but sometimes the rooted in the soil of the herb terrace).
May 3: 50-62, rain overnight. From 9.30-11, as I worked in the garden, 2 Cardinals, 2 Robins, 1 Titmouse, 3 Catbirds; 1 Yellow W. and 1 Indigo Bunting across the road where a 20+ acre field has not been mowed since 2008 and now had thick brush with some 6+ft. junipers and several 10ft bushy trees.
May 4: 52-78, grey after some rain, sun in aft., rain at night with rumbles. 9.30-11.30 same as yesterday + Chickadee, with Mocking Bird and Redwing Blb. across the road.
7-730pm: 1 Towhee, 3 Catbirds, 1 Robin, 1 Chipping Sparrow, 1 Orioles and 1 Woodthrush.
Haven't heard the Car. Wren since 4/17.
May 5: 58-70, hazy. 7.30-8am: Cardinal, Titmouse, Oriole, Robin, Towhee, Ch. Sparrow and a ventriloquist Blue Jay.
May 6: 54-68, looking like rain. 7am Robin and Red-eyed Vireo; 7 pm a Woodthrush.
May 11: 46-67, blue with high clouds, breezy. 2pm 1 Catbird and 1 Towhee singing steadily.
May 12: 52-78, blue, calm. 10am: a Scarlet Tanager, a Housefinch and a Chickadee foraging with an occasional song.
May 17: 59-74, n.breeze in Del. In the woods off rte 9, a lot of song 8.30-10.30 am and near Finis Pool and woods at noon: C.ythroat, Yellow, Prothonotary Ovenbird and La. Waterthrush; Wh. and Red-eyed Vireo, Orchard O., both Tanagers.
May 18-23: a pair of cardinals have been chasing each other. was the first nest disturbed?
a Robin feeding a single fledgling even tho there were 4 eggs; another Robin gathering nesting material.
May 20: 54-78, sunny, wile gardening, around 10am, 2 (or 3) B. orioles were dominating the song of Catbird, Cardinal and Housefinch.
May22: 56, grey, 7am, Woodthrush, Rose-br. Grossb., and a lot of different chipnotes.
May 24: 60-80, partly sunny, Belleplain dirt road etc. 6-30-10.20am, best song period 8-930; Worm-eating, Kentucky, Yellowthroated and Hooded warblers, Ovenbird, La. Waterthrush, Wh, and Red-eyed and Blue-headed Vireos, Acadian Flyc., Phoebe; a Yellow-breated Chat, a Peewee, lots of Marsh Wrens, a Va. Rail calling at Jake's Landing at noon. A Seaside Sparrow (3 songs) on Nummy Island in afternoon.
Bought a set of Birdsong Cd's, mostly to verify what I heard without seeing. It's confusing, but after repetitions, I think my memory of my birding buddy Charles' idents served me well.
May 28: 67-84, blue and humid, 4.30-530am a Robin almost continuously; 6am a Woodthrush's ee-oh-lay ending in a gurgle, while moving around; 7am Robin, Towhee, Cardinal, Rose-br. Grosbeak, 10am catbird wiht a Titmouse and Car.Wren down the creek.
May 31: 61-81, blue and calm (lots of bugs). Birding in Delaware, Odessa-Bombay Hk. Birds singing (8.30-10.30): Red and Wh.-eyed Vireos, C. Yellowthr., Yellow and Prothonotary Ws, Ovenbird, both Tanagers, Towhee, Blue Grosb., Acad. flyc., Great Cr. Flyc., Orch. O., Horned Lark, Song, Swamp, Field and Grasshopper Sparrows, Ind. Btg. Some songs on Ch.s identification.
June 3: 47-69, blue, humid. t-storm at 1.30; readbellies feeding fledglings.
June 6: 49-72, blue early, overcast by aft.noon; in mng a Robin singing continuously, oblivious to its apparent soar throat; a Goldf. singing now and then.
June 9: 59-81. sun/clouds; the "hoarse" Robin giving first 3 notes only, sounding a bit like a R.e. Vireo; 2 other Robons, a Towhee, a Goldfinch and something else far in the background, as I was fertiling the veg. herb. and containers.
June 11: 63-80, mostly overcast; at 4.30am 2 birds singing, one a Robin, the other more melodious, the Rose-br. Gr.beak probably.
June 14: 62-76, sun with high clouds. Robins, Car. Wren (only occasionally); the Towhee singing for 15 minutes at 8am in the hickory above the herb terrace.
June 15, 58-76, while working in the garden midmorning, the neighboring Mocking b. was doing its Cardinals and Robin stuff while a Card. was singing down the creek with a chewinking Towhee. Across the road a Goldf. and a Chestn. sided W. were singing while foraging and a Chipping Sp sang occasionally. One or more of the Catbirds around the house were joining in from time to time after I disturbed them.
June 21, 67-89 (after 2 days in 90s), at 5.20am a Catb. in front and a Card. in back; at 8.30 a Robin and a card. briefly. Around 10am a Catbird, a Ch.Sp., and a family of 4+? Chickadees all foraging Chickadee style; a Redb.Wp and a Nuthatch also foraging.
June 23: 62-83, from 7 to 8.30am a surprising concert: a Catb. in the bushes around me, a Towhee along the drive, a Robin nearby, a Goldf. a bit farther off, an Oriole and a Woodthrush came by pausing to sing while foraging and after that a Car. Wren around the house.
July 4, 68-92, humid in the middle of a heat wave; there has been no sustained singing and only a Catbird mumbles occasionally. The Car. Wren one time did three different songs in a row one aft. but mostly gives only its call, as does the Towhee. The Summer Silence has set in.
July 12, 59-87, blue and crisp: 6.30am the woodthrush was singing while foraging from my left in a half circle, in the brush, to my right. The eeh-oh-lay sounded a bit raspy, espec. in the "lay" that was actually a shortened slur. The last few days the Towhee has also been singing while foraging (at different times of the day); the first 2 notes clear as if it was a call and the thrill faster than in May and sometimes half inaudible or swallowed.
later saw a Redbelly drumming.
2-9-12, 12.30+ sunny, 38: It is not exactly a song but today the two Redtails that began to occupy their nest on the adjacent farm along 113 two weeks ago, were soaring above the trees in ever wider and higher intersecting courtship circles while calling their repeated high-pitched cheeeeew. (nothing of the books' 'harsh" about it).
at 3pm there were also the clear tones of a Titmouse and the double note of the Carolina Wren.
2-16-12: because some blogs report frequent singing, I have taken to watching perched finches etc. but all of them appear closed mouthed.
2-22-12: 10.30am, 48: earlier there were three male Cardinals on and near the feeders, but as I replenished them one of them was singing down the creek, across the road, sustained for several minutes.
at 2, 56 degrees, went out to see if there were more singers. Forgot my hearing aid.
Later I went down to the creek and walked zigzag up and sat on the bench, but all was silent except for a Downy calling. (The 20 or so early species crocus I brought from Super House on the campus, have multiplied to more than a hundred down the slope, some even in the stone wall).
March 7: while waiting for a stray Broadtail Hummer to appear in a yard in Cape May Point, I heard a soft warble, pretty sustained, much like a Starling as a ventriloquist, but all I could find were Robins. But then, with only one ear functioning.... But it was a Robin after all, for at home, on 3/12, 2 Robins were singing, close to each other in the same tree, in the same sort of way, though louder and they interspersed it with the shrill alarm notes. The "song" was a series of stjilps with a few warbles, each series longer than the normal song.
March 9: a Song sparrow on a fence post in Stone Harbor singing loudly and turning in all directions. A lot of effort that was also clearly visible.
March 10: a male Housef. offering a seed from the feeder to a female. 2 Kestrels copulating in a tree on the edge of Wegman pkg lot.
March 12: a Carolina Wren singing by the creek.
March 13: This time for sure: a Starling singing and not as ventriloquist but with beak wide open for the high notes; an odd collection of picked up sounds but also a nice warble. The bird in full sun on the feeder post and like a modern singer all shiny in metallics, black, purple and even green as the wings vibrated.
March 14: it's like the old recipe for rabbit stew: If you want the hear the birds singing, first be outside (with your hearing aid)! Yesterday and today we were working on the garden (resp. 74 and 69 degrees with blue skies and calm). One or two Cardinals are singing most of the morning and one, farther away, this afternoon but not very long. The Carolina Wren comes to the feeders, but sings mostly by the creek and across the road. And a Titmouse was in great form high in the trees from left to right with about 10 minutes of its four high fluted notes. Underneath, very softly a brown creeper was trying out its one toned wheez line, with interruptions, for about a minute. I actually was surprised it was a Brown Creeper as for some reason I didn't expect this inconspicuous and discreet bird to make any sound. The Red bellied Woodp. was quarking a few times and then, farther off let go with its repeated ieng notes.
March 17: blue after a thick fog, 39 going up to 70. garden work: planting swiss chard seedlings and sowing a mix of lettuces, arugula etc. as well as Chinese peas. With birds singing: the Cardinals, but also in the jungle across the road, a White Throat, a House Finch and a Brown creeper. The forsythia is out also.
March 18: as we were reading on the front lawn in the afternoon sun (74 degrees) it sounded like spring. A Brown Creeper was whispering between examining the cracks in the oak bark in the hedgerow between us and the eastern neighbor, more than one Cardinal was singing, one of them overlaid by the flute of a Titmouse and the summer song of the Car. Wren. The more pleasant singer was the House Finch which did its three part line for about 20 minutes in the middle stories of the hickories; sitting nearly upright and in the sun it was so slender that it looked like a warbler but neither have I seen one here so far, nor did I recognize it as the song of a likely warbler: too much variation! But it moved out of the sun to show its colors.
March 19: Blue and 52 at 9.30. I was looking at BBC news with a check of the feeders. A half moulded Goldfinch was singing on top of the feeder post, its neck vibrating, beak fairly open for the high notes.
March 20: as I was working in the garden, at approx. 1-2pm (74 degrees, mostly sunny with high white clouds) a veritable concert all around (i.e. when I turned my hearing aid in any direction) there was a veritable concert. Both House and Gold finches (the latter also did their flight call while foraging on the branches); Juncos, Titmice and even a Chickadee (a first), several Cardinals, a Carolina Wren (almost "inside" my ear) and several woodpeckers with their serial calls, incl. one that sounded like a flicker, but I haven't seen one of those since last year.
March 21: 2 flickers high in an oak on a dead limb, one of them calling.
March 23: as we were leaving for a birding trip to Delaware, at 6.30am, a Robing was singing loudly an long as if it was territory announcement time. In Del. a singing Song, Field and Swamp Sparrow. We also heard three different Towhees calling.
March 25: 1st Towhee, male (on the feeder).
March 27: 1st Chipping Sparrow, 1 male only
April 1: grey and 49; the Towhee still alone, but sat on the feeder post and called.
April 3: 3 female Cardinal chasing each other thru the spruce and away while 1 male was feeding in the "covered bridge."
April 4: A male Redbelly gave a (not very sharp or high) roll and flew to a branch, soon to be followed by a female from the opposite direction. Copulation, after which the female flew to the brush by the creek and the male to the suet.
A male Cardinal peeled a seed and brought it to a female.
April 5: 2 Mourning Doves on the stone wall in a "parakeet act" before copulating
April 6: Sth jersey. On Jake's Landing Rd. 2 Yellow-throated and 1 Pine Warbler singing, but hard to locate and not only by me with my less than flexible neck. Then Marijke, my daughter, camping near the Dismal Swamp in NC sent me a picture of a Yellow-throated on a bare branch right in front of her. And she's not even Irish.
April 10: a Housefinch was singing softly while I was working in the gdn in the aft. A cool day with a chilly wind.
There were only 2 Bluejays in stead of the usual 3. They were courting and one brought something to the other.
Apparently the Redtails have abandoned their nest and they have not been around on their daily visits.
April 12: Copulating Cowbirds. Not what we need. But also a pair of the small downies, the feeding maneuver before copulation.
April 14: 5.30pm, 72, Car. Wren; Redb.wp. drumming, a flycatcher's 2 (or 3) not call, but I couldn't find it.
April 15:,33.30 pm. 82degr., Car. Wren, a Cardinal and a (Y. Runp?) Warbler. At 7.30 more singing: Towhee (sustained), 2 Cards, Titmouse, a Robin and one in constant alarm call, Redb. drumming.
April 16: 10-11am, 84 (went to 89!) Towhee, the Warbler, Cardinal, Song and Field Sp, Cowbird and a very loud que-arrk (of a Sapsucker?)
April 17: 70, like yesterday, but no que-arrk or Warbler, but songs of Car. Wren and the Redw. Blackb. that came to the feeder from time to time, was singing at the neighbors (why go the New Jersey?).
Appril 27: 60, very windy. We went to New Jersey and were on Jake's Landing Rd, by 9am. Some birds were singing, mostly intermittently, among them a White-eyed Vireo and a Warbling Vireo as well as the Yellow-throated and Pine Warblers that have been there for a while now. But even a Cardinal was singing only between foraging. At 3pm, on the way home, we drove up and down the dirt road in Belleplain in absolute silence; stopping to scan the trees, not one bird was detected though at home this is the time that they forage again and often sing.
May 1: 48-74, grey after rainy night. At 10.30 while working in the garden a real chorus of bird song: cardinal, Robin, Song Sparrow, Housefinch as well as a non-resident singer with 4-5 clear and laud melodious flutes like a Veery or a Swainson Thrush.
May 2: 50-51, some soft rain. At 9.30 a soft 2-note see-see, repeated a few times, a Black and White W.? At 10.30 a clear Housefinch; at 2.30 a clear Chipping Sparrow.
Last week the male Redb.wp. was foraging and flying off across the creek. Today both Redb. were foraging and flying off in the same direction, almost alternatively (they did so at least until May 27 when the leaves began to hide the tree trunks, but sometimes the rooted in the soil of the herb terrace).
May 3: 50-62, rain overnight. From 9.30-11, as I worked in the garden, 2 Cardinals, 2 Robins, 1 Titmouse, 3 Catbirds; 1 Yellow W. and 1 Indigo Bunting across the road where a 20+ acre field has not been mowed since 2008 and now had thick brush with some 6+ft. junipers and several 10ft bushy trees.
May 4: 52-78, grey after some rain, sun in aft., rain at night with rumbles. 9.30-11.30 same as yesterday + Chickadee, with Mocking Bird and Redwing Blb. across the road.
7-730pm: 1 Towhee, 3 Catbirds, 1 Robin, 1 Chipping Sparrow, 1 Orioles and 1 Woodthrush.
Haven't heard the Car. Wren since 4/17.
May 5: 58-70, hazy. 7.30-8am: Cardinal, Titmouse, Oriole, Robin, Towhee, Ch. Sparrow and a ventriloquist Blue Jay.
May 6: 54-68, looking like rain. 7am Robin and Red-eyed Vireo; 7 pm a Woodthrush.
May 11: 46-67, blue with high clouds, breezy. 2pm 1 Catbird and 1 Towhee singing steadily.
May 12: 52-78, blue, calm. 10am: a Scarlet Tanager, a Housefinch and a Chickadee foraging with an occasional song.
May 17: 59-74, n.breeze in Del. In the woods off rte 9, a lot of song 8.30-10.30 am and near Finis Pool and woods at noon: C.ythroat, Yellow, Prothonotary Ovenbird and La. Waterthrush; Wh. and Red-eyed Vireo, Orchard O., both Tanagers.
May 18-23: a pair of cardinals have been chasing each other. was the first nest disturbed?
a Robin feeding a single fledgling even tho there were 4 eggs; another Robin gathering nesting material.
May 20: 54-78, sunny, wile gardening, around 10am, 2 (or 3) B. orioles were dominating the song of Catbird, Cardinal and Housefinch.
May22: 56, grey, 7am, Woodthrush, Rose-br. Grossb., and a lot of different chipnotes.
May 24: 60-80, partly sunny, Belleplain dirt road etc. 6-30-10.20am, best song period 8-930; Worm-eating, Kentucky, Yellowthroated and Hooded warblers, Ovenbird, La. Waterthrush, Wh, and Red-eyed and Blue-headed Vireos, Acadian Flyc., Phoebe; a Yellow-breated Chat, a Peewee, lots of Marsh Wrens, a Va. Rail calling at Jake's Landing at noon. A Seaside Sparrow (3 songs) on Nummy Island in afternoon.
Bought a set of Birdsong Cd's, mostly to verify what I heard without seeing. It's confusing, but after repetitions, I think my memory of my birding buddy Charles' idents served me well.
May 28: 67-84, blue and humid, 4.30-530am a Robin almost continuously; 6am a Woodthrush's ee-oh-lay ending in a gurgle, while moving around; 7am Robin, Towhee, Cardinal, Rose-br. Grosbeak, 10am catbird wiht a Titmouse and Car.Wren down the creek.
May 31: 61-81, blue and calm (lots of bugs). Birding in Delaware, Odessa-Bombay Hk. Birds singing (8.30-10.30): Red and Wh.-eyed Vireos, C. Yellowthr., Yellow and Prothonotary Ws, Ovenbird, both Tanagers, Towhee, Blue Grosb., Acad. flyc., Great Cr. Flyc., Orch. O., Horned Lark, Song, Swamp, Field and Grasshopper Sparrows, Ind. Btg. Some songs on Ch.s identification.
June 3: 47-69, blue, humid. t-storm at 1.30; readbellies feeding fledglings.
June 6: 49-72, blue early, overcast by aft.noon; in mng a Robin singing continuously, oblivious to its apparent soar throat; a Goldf. singing now and then.
June 9: 59-81. sun/clouds; the "hoarse" Robin giving first 3 notes only, sounding a bit like a R.e. Vireo; 2 other Robons, a Towhee, a Goldfinch and something else far in the background, as I was fertiling the veg. herb. and containers.
June 11: 63-80, mostly overcast; at 4.30am 2 birds singing, one a Robin, the other more melodious, the Rose-br. Gr.beak probably.
June 14: 62-76, sun with high clouds. Robins, Car. Wren (only occasionally); the Towhee singing for 15 minutes at 8am in the hickory above the herb terrace.
June 15, 58-76, while working in the garden midmorning, the neighboring Mocking b. was doing its Cardinals and Robin stuff while a Card. was singing down the creek with a chewinking Towhee. Across the road a Goldf. and a Chestn. sided W. were singing while foraging and a Chipping Sp sang occasionally. One or more of the Catbirds around the house were joining in from time to time after I disturbed them.
June 21, 67-89 (after 2 days in 90s), at 5.20am a Catb. in front and a Card. in back; at 8.30 a Robin and a card. briefly. Around 10am a Catbird, a Ch.Sp., and a family of 4+? Chickadees all foraging Chickadee style; a Redb.Wp and a Nuthatch also foraging.
June 23: 62-83, from 7 to 8.30am a surprising concert: a Catb. in the bushes around me, a Towhee along the drive, a Robin nearby, a Goldf. a bit farther off, an Oriole and a Woodthrush came by pausing to sing while foraging and after that a Car. Wren around the house.
July 4, 68-92, humid in the middle of a heat wave; there has been no sustained singing and only a Catbird mumbles occasionally. The Car. Wren one time did three different songs in a row one aft. but mostly gives only its call, as does the Towhee. The Summer Silence has set in.
July 12, 59-87, blue and crisp: 6.30am the woodthrush was singing while foraging from my left in a half circle, in the brush, to my right. The eeh-oh-lay sounded a bit raspy, espec. in the "lay" that was actually a shortened slur. The last few days the Towhee has also been singing while foraging (at different times of the day); the first 2 notes clear as if it was a call and the thrill faster than in May and sometimes half inaudible or swallowed.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
the modest birder (18): environmentalist integrity
Note: This post began as a plea for integrity on the part of environmental advocates but ended up as a fairly long summary of available information on the status of the N. American population of the Red Knot, a summary that suggests scientists need to be more careful with their data. (10-11-12)
When I taught "Historical Methods" I emphasized that when one does research for an honors thesis, etc. or to make a convincing argument in an exam essay or term paper, one must be aware of and examine all facts, including those that may run counter to one's thesis. Rather than an "on the one hand or the other hand" mind set, the students should consider that each hand has 5 fingers, etc. As I was not very successful, I started to use the example of a trial lawyer who is confronted with an opponent who presents a petition to a judge. The petition is based on precedent, e.g X vs. Y. The trial lawyer has to know this precedent and its context in order to present cases that reject X vs.Y as valid ground for the granting of the petition. In academic research, of course, the idea is not to win (which in courtroom cases may lead to innocents being put in jail, for ex. the recent cases in Illinois). The one-sided "lawyerly" approach is well illustrated by the 2008 biography of Roger Tory Peterson, Birdwatcher, written by a lawyer. She produced a hagiography, glossing over important negative aspects of P's personal relationships etc. that belong in a biography. Then there's the recent biography of Rosalie Edge, the sometime suffragette who later founded Hawk Mountain Sanctuary where I spent countless happy hours. At a conference in Tucson, Ariz., the author called Ms. Edge "the Godmother of the environmental movement" which might be overlooked as hyperbole but for the fact that it alters the history of that movement, of which, for ex. the 19th century George Bird Grinnell was a pioneer. In both cases, I think, we meet an author engaged in sales promotion. A good historian presents, where necessary, the most plausible alternative to a received interpretation to help establish a more accurate picture of the past. On the whole, Historians are less subject to financial and other pressures than scientists some of whose sloppy and even fraudulent research was highlighted by a front page article in the NYT Science Section of April 17, 2012. And Th. Piersma et. al., in The Ecologische atlas van Nederlandse wadvogels (1999),[Ec.atlas] also discuss the problems associated with the "privatization" of research funding (pp. 343-4). Other examples of scientific misconduct are given in an article in the NYT of 10-2-12, p.D3.
I got to thinking about this as I was reading one of my magazines about my favorite subjects, namely birds, nature and their conservation. One topic concerned global warming and in letters to the editor, 2 rejected the idea that there was a crisis and/or that it was man-made. The foundation for this was one-sided, viz. the US Senate Environment and Public Works Comm., which is the domain of the ecologically skeptic Senator Inhofe, as well as data from Native Energy (which promotes clean coal etc.) An example cited was the natural cycle of warming and cooling in the past, which is common place in the debate. One writer said not to worry about the polar bear as they had survived the warm period "when the Norse [the Danes?] were farming Greenland [only a small coastal strip then that is now becoming larger but covered with rising sea water] and the Northwest passage was open?" I wonder which Northwest Passage? The reader might think about the Bering Strait named after a Dane. But when was that open? Not when Bering was looking for it nor in the late 16th century when the Dutch under Barents (there is a Barents Sea north of Siberia) tried to get to the fabled East. Was it when the Indians came out of Siberia to settle in the Americas? Would any one think that it was a break in the ice approximately where the Mississippi Valley is now? Millennia ago! Not, of course, when the reference is to Norse agriculture on Greenland. Though the question about the polar bear during an earlier arctic melt down could be important if we find evidence of such a meltdown before or after the polar bear had evolved from the grizzly.
As to whether modern humans cause global warming I go along with scientists who argue that we are. Previous natural cycles could last as many as 15 centuries and since the last cooling (the so-called "little ice age," ca.1500-1750) not enough time has lapsed to account for the current warming or the current rate of increased warming. The salient factor that is different from earlier warming periods is the recent (since about 1700) expansion of the human population and the even faster increase of modern inventions (since about 1850) that cause the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere which is accompanied by the destruction of forests worldwide that could absorb some of it. The destruction of forests is not only part of the climate change story, but also of the much more general issue of the worldwide human impact on the environment (i.e. habitat destruction). Some of the scientific information has alarmed the U.S. Navy about the melting of the ice in the arctic seas (D. Mackenzie, "Arctic Meltdown," New Scientist, 2002, 2 March:5).
The polar bear reminded me of a more acute question involving another example of our impact on the environment, namely the connection between the increased fishing of horseshoe crabs, beginning in the 1990s in the Delaware Bay and the decline of the rufa subspecies of the Knot Sandpiper that feeds on the crab eggs to store energy for the flight to their arctic breeding grounds. These Knots are called Red Knots in America, but they are actually only one (or two) of the subspecies of Knots that spread as the last ice age began to recede. Alarm bells have been ringing, New Jersey has a moratorium on the harvesting of the crabs and the Audubon Soc. and others are pressing for the bird's endangered status. To come back to my History Methods model: not merely for the obvious scientific reasons, but in particular for public relations' sake, is it important that conservationists in general and defenders of threatened species or of bio-diversity in particular, do not fail in their goals because they appear to neglect information (let alone suppress it) and thus give fodder to the "Inhofes." At 82, I no longer have the drive to do the sort of research I did for my publications in History, but I have gathered some information concerning the sketchy data of the past occurrence of the Red Knots that I could do as a mostly sedentary birder.
But first a summary of the birds' present status for which we have numerous research papers as well as a 2007 collation of these: Status of the Red Knot Calidris canutus in the Western Hemisphere, by L.J.Niles and others, as well as the 2010 Update (resp. Status 2007 and Update 2010). And I did some clicking on the Internet sites of the New Jersey Fish Commission and some of its links, for ex. the www.ceoe.udel.edu/horseshoecrab/regulations/html (udel.edu) where, among other information, one finds the regulations of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).
The debate about the well being of the rufa population of the Knot is fuelled by estimates of 200,000 shorebirds based on aerial counts in the 1980s that were about equally divided between Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings and Semi-palmated Sandpipers, i.e. some 50,000 Knots. Incidentally: were Dunlin, Dowitchers and Black-bellied Plovers overlooked or sorted out? These estimates have since been called into question and the high of the 80s has been corrected to approx. 70,000 shorebirds. Yet the old numbers persist in the literature, for ex. D.M.Buehler, B.I. Tieleman and Th. Piersma (Auk, 2010, 127:394-7) open with: "Hundreds of thousands of shorebirds" occur on spring migration in the Delaware bay. And an article in the NYT of June 5, 2012 that describes the banding, etc. at Reed's Beach, N.J., while noting that this year's count of Knots in the Bay are was about double that of 2011, also states that this is way less than the "100,000 of the 1980s." These numbers may be supported by a report on the udel.edu site "Migratory Shorebirds" stating that according to once-weekly aerial counts in May and on June 5, 2001 "the actual number of shorebirds [. . . ] may surpass one million." Yet, the accompanying graph shows a peak for Semi-palmated Sandpipers at fewer than 200.000 on May 30; fewer than 100,000 Turnstones on 5/23; fewer than 50,000 Dunlin on 5/23 and slightly fewer Knots on the same day, which makes significantly less than half a million birds (but still "hundreds of thousands") by adding the peak days for each of these species; it is hardly an "equal" division among species. Using the term "shorebirds" while talking about Knots seems to create confusion. As I pointed out, "shorebirds" includes more than the four species mentioned above. Also: its use in a discussion of Knots leaves the impression that "hundreds of thousands" rely on the horseshoe crab, which is not the case (see below).
Meanwhile I received a beautifully illustrated "coffee table" book Life Along the Delaware Bay. Cape May, Gateway to a Million Shorebirds. Rutgers U.P., 2012. Written by Lawrence Niles and others, it is illustrated with photographs by Jan van der Kam. Both titles are somewhat misleading as the focus (as can be expected from Lawrence Niles) is primarily on the horseshoe crab and the birds that feed on them an in particular on the Knot (for which Cape May is not a major stop over in either season). It has a pie chart showing the peak aerial count for eight primary species of shorebirds in 2008. The explanation refers to "nearly half a million birds in the 1980s" and "fewer than 150,000 in 2010 of which Knots comprise 9% with Dunlin 31%, Semi-palmated Sandpipers 35% and Ruddy Turnstones 13%. Of these the Knots and Turnstones, according to the relevant chapters, are most dependent on the crab eggs.
Research also focuses on counting the number of a species in its Arctic breeding regions [that are affected by global warming] and in their winter quarters [that are also affected] (Morrison, R.I.G. a.o. “Population Estimates of North American Shorebirds.” Wader Study Group Bull. 111:67-85). Apparently not all knots fly to Argentina, for. ex. some winter also along the Atlantic coast and 60 were observed in Stone Harbor, N.J., in February of 2008 and 66 appeared there on the Bay shore in Jan. of 2012 and in yet another winter there were about 100 on Hereford Inlet near the toll bridge to Wildwood; these may belong to a different population, the roselaari.
The rufa Knots are one of five subspecies all of them apparently only geographically separate populations that spread north eastward after the last Ice Age from a rather small number of survivors of the nominate species, Calidris canutus canutus, that lived then on the tundra in what is now Western Europe. Like the rufa population, these nominate Knots are long distance migrants. They winter on the west coast of Africa and farther south; the Dutch Wadden Sea and the Wash in Norfolk, Engl., are their major foraging areas on migration. (One autumn in the 1950s, a few birding buddies and I witnessed a flight of Knots that numbered in the 10s of thousands as they sought higher ground in the Wadden Sea. Apparently they were only a portion of the Knots there). The five subspecies split at different stages as the ice receded. Two of them (Piersmai and Rogersi) breed in northern Siberia, while two others, the Roselaari and Rufa populations spread to Alaska and the Canadian tundra. However these splits occurred, a large population, the Islandica separated from the Canutus in Europe and moved northwest to Iceland, Greenland and the easternmost Canadian archipelago (Ec.atlas, p.144). Observing them from a distance, even now with a scope, I have never been able to distinguish either the Islandica from the nominate in Holland or the Rufa from the Roselaari on the Delaware Bay. I am not the only one having problems, for ex. the Petersen and Burrows Birds of New England (2004) warn against confusion with several other shorebirds (they also note that small numbers of Knots winter along the coasts of Southern New England). I was much relieved when I saw a photo (Status, 2007, p. 9) of two handheld Knots one of which "is believed to be a roselaari." Throughout the Status report its authors refer to the "taxonomic uncertainty" about the populations in the USA (incl. Alaska where Roselaari may be joined by Siberian Rogersi Knots). In the past all these Knots had one name: Tringa islandica. Like other birds, Knots are subject to many problems, for ex. Evans and Penkovski (1984) estimate a 20-30% survival rate of 1st year birds and Baker and Baker (1973) found only a 40-50% fledging success.
I had never seen more than "hundreds" of shorebirds together at one time in May and early June along the Delaware Bay beaches. Even adding the various groups at several spots they numbered perhaps a few thousands, only a small number of Knots among them. When they are feeding on the eggs it is difficult to keep them apart from behind the fences that now protect the spawning horseshoe crabs in many places on the Jersey side. The Delaware Rare Bird Alert recorded 6,000 Knots on a roost near Mispillion at the end of May in 2011, most of which any birder could observe. When feeding, the birds jostle each other onward or out of the way and some, having ended up on the back of the spawning crabs confound my attempts to identify those on the other side. In their feeding frenzy they appear oblivious to their surroundings. The first time I saw this phenomenon was on the then still very small beach at the Forsythe (Brigantine) NWR. We stood together with several other birders on the dyke right above the egg laying crabs and the gorging birds. They were nearly all Semi-palmated Sandpipers, perhaps a hundred, pressed together so closely that one could see no sand between them and the crabs. The few Dunlin and Turnstones stayed out of the fray and fed on the edges among the Laughing Gulls; no Knots. Actually among the flocks I see each spring on the beaches, the Semi-palmated Sandpipers are always the most numerous though in some spots Turnstones dominate, like on the beach remnants along the rock reinforced road at Port Mahon in Delaware. When I am there Knots are rare, for ex. on May 18, 2012 I found nine along the road, but the Del. Shorebird Project people located 200 in the entire area (along with 2000 Semi-palmated Sandpipers of which I saw fewer than 100, 1500 Ruddy Turnstones of which I saw about 500 and 20 Sanderlings, of which I saw 11). There were also 8 Willets and about 200 Laughing Gulls and some 100 Dunlin in two flocks, one of which on the mudflats where the road curbs along the shore (these were not mentioned by the Project). It was low tide and although one day before the full moon, there were hardly any crabs along the road, which was surprising because two weeks earlier there were about 100 crabs trying to find a beach. While the shorebirds feed on fresh eggs before they fly on to the Arctic, not all the remaining eggs hatch in the summer, some take several months and so we saw in late September 2009 a flock of about 50 Turnstones and 20 Sanderlings feeding in the “May mode” on a rare clean patch of gravelly beach at Port Mahon.
Away from the beaches, especially at high tides, large numbers of shorebirds may gather to roost in impoundments, as was the case on April 20, 2012 at Bombay Hook (Del.) when I estimated the various separate groups of a few hundred at more than 2,000 all together; a flock of less than 100 Black-bellied Plovers was off by itself on dry mud in Bear Swamp, but in the other pools three groups of Dunlin contained also quite a few Short-billed Dowitchers, Lesser Yellow Legs and some smaller peeps, but two flocks, one of them of several hundred, of Semi-palmated Sandpipers were off by themselves. The size of these flocks looked most impressive when they all wheeled about in the air as a Harrier tried its luck. During the next two weeks the Del.RBA still mentioned thousands of shorebirds there. On May 18, at low tide several thousand actively foraging birds were mostly spread out on the mudflats across from Shearness including hundreds of Black-bellied Plover and Dunlin; as expected for mudflats, there were no horseshoe crabs in evidence. For the week of 4/25/12 the Del. Rba reported 7,000 Knots, 5,000 Dunlin, 10,000 Semi-Palms, 1,000 Sanderling and 2,000 Sh-billed Dow., at Mispillion; at the Ted Harvey area there were 2,500 Knots, 3,800 Dunlin, 6,000 Semi-palms, 2,500 Sh-billed Dow. This adds up to 40,300 shorebirds (Ruddy Turnstones or other shorebirds were not included in the reports from either place). The Delaware Shorebird Project, noting on 5/29 that shorebird numbers were greatly diminished, reported for Mispillion 50 to100 Knots, 2,000 Ruddy Turnstones, 1,500 Sanderling, 14,000 Semi-palms and small numbers of Dunlin and Sh-billed Dowitchers. We were along Rte 9 and Bombay Hook, not at any beach, on 5/31 at low tide and saw about 750 Semi-palms spread out over the mud (flying in small separate flocks of about 50 when moving), 2 Black-bellied and 3 Semi-palmated Plovers, 1 White-Rumped Sandp., and perhaps 20 Dunlin. Although the crabs prefer gravelly sandy beaches to lay their eggs, once again we scoped the mudflats that were open to the Delaware Bay and found no evidence of Horsehoe Crabs (and never any Knots). Thus while tens of thousands of shorebirds stop over on the Bay, most do not depend on the crab eggs and large numbers clearly do not feed near the "horseshoe beaches."
In 2014, Colette and I spent May 19-21 in N.J. and Delaware. We started with the Forsythe NWR which after super storm Sandy has a larger sandy stretch along the Southern dike, but we saw few crabs and no Knots. It was low tide and were 100s of Semi-palmated Sandpipers, some twenty Turnstones, a few Dowitchers were foraging in the mud and shallow channels, while the Dunlin were mostly in the impoundment along the North dike. By the time we got to Nummy Island it was high tide and shorebirds were hard to find in the tall saltmarsh grass that was high enough to hide a foraging Tri-colored heron when it stepped into a channel. The next day we stopped off at Reed's Beach where on the southern beach there were plenty of crabs, a few thousand Laughing Gulls and lots of shorebirds, including Knots. But even at 60x the clustered shorebirds were difficult to keep apart. At the North end, there were also lots of crabs, but only 3 Knots among the hundreds of Gulls. In the afternoon we had more success at Cook Beach (which is below Reed's) where the fence is closer to the shorebird roost. But the best views we had the next day at Mispillion, on the Delaware side. According to one of the researcher Colette talked with there were some 1500 Knots roosting on several sand spits and the jetty and thousands of such other shorebirds as Turnstones, Dunlin, Sanderlin and Semi-palmated sandpipers as well as the ever present Laughing Gulls. We did not visit any of the other Delaware Bay beaches, but at Bombay Hook there were a larger numbers of Semi-palms and Dowitchers on the mudflats.
To me, this kind of evidence is among the most spellbinding as it raises questions about the rhythm of nature, the life of birds, the timing of their migration, the choice of the Delaware Bay rather than some other place where there also are horseshoe crabs, or what will happen if the crabs, these fossils of earlier stages of evolution, really disappeared. Current studies are mostly focused on the taking of the crabs for bait by eel and conch fishermen or for medical research which uses their blood since it was discovered, in 1956, that the crabs have an inbuilt blood-clotting mechanism which acts like a primitive immune system. These crabs have a 90% survival rate when they are returned to the sea (Post "LAL Research" on udel.edu). A "soundbite" item in the Nat. Geographic Mag. for August 2011, pp 28-29, states that 500,000 crabs are caught each year along the US coast, They take 20% of the blood of each crab, after which they are returned to the ocean where they have a 15% survival rate, which means that 75,000 don't make it. A post (2 Febr.,’03) on the Delaware Audubon website painted a dismal picture: from an estimated 80,000 Knots on the Bay in 1998, the number fell to about 30,000 in 2002 and the Knot was thought to have a 54% survival rate [for the Bay population?]. In the post "Shorebird Recovery Project" at Manomet.org [2008?] it is estimated that the Red Knot "will become extinct by 2010." As reported in the NYT article cited earlier, this fortunately has not happened and the Manomet post should have been updated. A 2012 post at Manomet.org (Shorebird Recovery) giving a graph of the decline for several species states that the Knot population declined to 15,000 from 50.000 in 1985. Somehow the numbers do not appear to add up.
Such declines may seem hard to believe and since the Morrison article, more research has been done on the accuracy of counting birds by European ornithologists. They found that the average error for flocks of roosting birds was 37% and 17% for flying flocks. Status 2007 makes it clear that recent counters, incl. Morrison himself, are fully aware of these possible errors. (37% or 1/3 of 150,000 equals 50,000 or the alleged total of 1985). Some annual fluctuations in the numbers cannot be explained by counting errors; other explanations are unfortunately still hypothetical. Aerial counting has the further disadvantage that small wader species are difficult to identify, though on the Bay the larger size of the Knots may help. Still, even if the Delaware Bay figures are only approximate but show a long term trend they are alarming indeed and crab conservation measures may be coming too late, partly because crabs take about eight or more years to reach the egg laying stage.
Obviously there remains a lingering confusion about the actual numbers. Apparently researchers, writers, much less reporters, do not spend much effort in weeding out the received data from later and more accurate ones. I have given sone examples above, but here is another one from Birdlife International (2010) whose www.Birdlife.org/datazone/sowb/casestudy/23 on the impact of shellfisheries states that at one time there were 150,000-100,000 and "now as few as 18,000" Knots while referring to Status 2007 (for the later number?).
As I indicated, we don’t have horseshoe crabs in Holland and thousands of Knots (both the Canutus and Islandica subspecies) feed in the Wadden Sea area on small cockles. Over-harvesting of cockles, it is thought, caused the drastic decline in the number of the nominate Knots, but not as much of the Islandica subspecies that feed on the same prey. This may be because the nominate species (from the Eurasian tundra) arrive after the Islandica (from Greenland and Canada) and thus find fewer prey. The destruction of cockle beds in the Wadden Sea resulted from fishing with suction dredges which increased the yield of cockles some forty times to 80,000 tons in 1989 over the older trawling methods. This type of fishing was outlawed in 2004, but by then the damage was done. Similar shellfish harvesting problems existed on the Wash. Considering that there are many other small prey like Baltic tellins, sand gapers and so forth in the Wadden Sea, I wonder why the disappearance of one shellfish could have such a drastic effect, unless the dredging disturbed the bottom habitat for these other prey as well.
I have also wondered whether rufa Knots could switch to another source of food. The rufa that winter in Patagonia, like other long-distance migrants (for ex. Bar-tailed Godwits and the canutus Knots in Europe), undergo physiological changes to reduce their weight before they undertake their northward flight. Among these is a change in their digestive system which prevents the Rufa from feeding on mollusks and makes it convenient for them that there are crab eggs. It would take extra time for the digestive system to change back, up to six days, before they could use the other food on which Dunlin etc. forage. It is argued that the birds need to regain the body weight they lost during the flight from the wintering grounds and a delay needed to change the digestive system would retard their return to the Arctic where there is only a short window to breed. Of the six populations of Knots only the Rufa has come to rely on the horseshoe crab. There is, nevertheless, important evidence provided by research done on the Virginia barrier islands, where some 13,000 Knots feed on the way north and that are apparently not dependent on the horseshoe crab (F.M. Smith and others, 2008); a summary of which is an addendum to Update 2010. Status 2007 (2008) discusses the Va counts in detail, going back to the late '70s - the era of high counts - when on May 20, 1978, 8,000 were counted on Metompkin Island alone. Their more recent numbers are larger than that of the alleged Roselaari populations that winter in northern Brazil or Florida and that might move up the coast in Spring; thus these Virginia Knots are likely to be Rufa. I have not found evidence for my suspicion that Virginia's Knot numbers are used to justify its opposition to the ASMFC harvest thresholds of the crabs. There is also some evidence that Knots from Caribbean areas may use the interior (and crabless) flyway from Texas to Saskatchewan. This may be corroborated by John Krider who in his [hunting] Notes (1879) states that they stop "for a day or two in Iowa, feeding along the slough."
I was interested to read in Clay and Pat Sutton’s Birds and Birding at Cape May (2008), a book that I much enjoyed, that in the late 19th century horseshoe crabs (in the Delaware bay?) had also been faced with extinction. They were nearly fished out of existence for fertilizer and it took many decades for the survivors to repopulate the Delaware Bay. In all my reading on the alarming state of the Bay, I found no reference to that kind of depletion of the crabs other than the fact that by the middle of the 20th century, when the crab population nearly collapsed, artificial fertilizers and other changes in agriculture reduced the need for the crabs (just as it reduced the use of alewives as fertilizer in New England). In the post "Fertilizer" (udel.edu) one learns that the number of crabs remained at about 1.5 million from the 1880s to the 1920s. The post "Regulations" on udel.edu cites a report that in 1857 the "entire strand of beach" was covered for miles with the crabs and it shows a foto from the early 1980s illustrating a similar event. Recently, as I hobbled down the stairs to the bathroom in a Lewes, Del., restaurant I noticed a black and white photograph among the historical pictures on the walls of a gigantic pile of Horse-shoe crab shells: unexpected evidence of their overfishing. Apparently between 1960 and 1980 their number was relatively constant at 2.3 to 4.1 million. Demand for eels from Japan in the 1970s and later for conch, mainly from Sth-east Asia, led to a rapid increase of the crab harvest in the 1990s. Fortunately, ASMFC regulations have led to significant reductions in the numbers taken for bait.
Because my mind has been professionally focused on critically examining received theories (in history), several specific questions occurred to me while reading the Suttons' discussion. Among these are: what did the Knots feed on in those allegedly horseshoe-crabless years? Were there great numbers before the overfishing? Did they feed instead on small mollusks like those seen farther south? And by the way: does the physiological change of the stomach occur also before their southward migration or do they then stop to forage more frequently and longer in one place than on their way north because there is no hurry to find a nesting place? The Suttons report also that the absence of old Knot decoys indicates that there may not have been enough Knots for the hunters to bother making them.
In a odd fit of nostalgia for the days of research for my publications (in the History of Ideas), I perused some of the earlier writers (among my own books) that could have been familiar to Witmer Stone, on whose Bird Studies of Old Cape May (1937) the Suttons relied for for much of their historical data. None of these writers mention horseshoe crabs, which may be because they focus on the southbound migration (August-October), all of them blame the near demise of the Knots around 1900 on market hunters “in the old days,” (Nat. Geogr. Book of Birds, 1932). Eaton, (Birds of New York, 1910) says they are more common in the fall [on Long Island] when “they return in large flocks” than in the spring and Forbush, (Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States, 1925), noting that the Eurasian and American “forms” were recently split [into two populations], says that “in the days of our grandparents [they occurred] on Cape Cod by the thousand” but were rare by 1900. Knight’s 1908 Birds of Maine supports these findings: they are generally uncommon but more numerous in the fall when there are plenty on the mudflats near Calais; they occur between May 24 and June 11 and return from August through September. The greater number in the Fall than the Spring is the reverse of the modern data for the Delaware Bay. Though these older sources talk about the southbound migration for the autumn, beginning in August, the July 5, 2012, Delaware RBA mentioned about 100 Knots. (This fuels my wonder at the rhythm of nature with shorebirds leaving the Bay in the 1st week of June and returning already in the 1st week of July. And they are not all non-breeding adults, for some were "still" in breeding plumage). These early publications all make use of data from the Proceedings of Bird Clubs, Scientific Societies and Reports from the various Boards of Agriculture. A note in the Jnl of the Maine Ornithological Society (1900:54-55) also bewails the "empty beaches." Stone in 1937, appears to rely almost exclusively on hunting lore. Through his leading career at the Philadelphia Academy of Science, etc. Stone could have had access to any number of 19th century sources . For ex. I wonder what lies hidden in the archives of the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, that go back to 1870 (www.state.nj.us/fgw/history.htm).
Stone says “as they [Dowitchers and Knots, flocking together] decoyed easily they most nearly approached extermination” at the turn of the century, but suspects the picture may be not be that bleak. This statement may explain why there are no old specific knot decoys, a generic large shorebird one may have done the job. Moreover, 19th Cent. sources often refer to the Knot's unwary behavior so that decoys may not have been necessary. Stone too concentrates on the southbound migration (which may be the result of his mostly summer observations and the hunters he then talked too) and he focuses on the Atlantic beaches and adjacent marshlands. Though he also observed them feeding in May, neither he nor Charles Urner, his correspondent for the Brigantine beach to the north mention horse shoe crabs; the numbers they give are only in the hundreds. The authors cited above describe their food as mollusks, crustaceans, sea-worms and insects which may be less the result of observation than of stomach content of shot birds in the autumn, for in the 19th century much attention was given to the question of a bird's usefulness to combat the generally held view of birds as pests. I wonder whether the pothunters were at it all year or whether they concentrated on the fall migration when numbers were large and farming tasks fewer. I am thinking about the British game law of 1831 that set hunting seasons for game birds from August through January.
A colleague and friend who collects prints drew my attention to Alexander Wilson whose American Ornithology is a pioneering work, much of which can be retrieved on the internet. In the 1840, 3 vol. edition by Thomas Mayo Brewer "with notes by [Sir William] Jardine," (the Scottish naturalist) a later editor wrote: "of this prettily marked species I can find no description . . . The common name on our seacoast is the Gray Back . . . [and it occurs] in small flocks on the sand flats." This is followed by a description of the Red-breasted Snipe, i.e. the Dowitcher. But in Alexander Wilson. The Scot Who Founder American Ornithology, (2013), the authors cite (pp 182-4) two descriptions of the knot, one the "Ash-colored Sandpiper, Tringa cinerea," which is the Knot in winter dress and the other the "Red-breasted Sandpiper, Tringa rufa" for the Knot in breeding plumage. . . . its favorite food, which is the small, thin, oval, bivalve shell fish of white or pearl color, and not larger than the seed of an apple.[which] must be extremely nutritious, for almost all those tribes [of sandpipers?] that feed on them are at this season [May] mere lumps of fat." I wonder whether these small white pearls were really shell fish rather than the eggs of the horse shoe crab. But in his description of the Ruddy Turnstone, which he calls a "rare species," Wilson mentions that in Cape May and Egg Harbor they are "known by the name of the Horse-foot Snipe from its living almost entirely on the eggs" of the crab, which is in fact what Knots do as well. It is likely that the "gunners" whom he mentions sometimes as sources, may have given him anecdotal information, which seems to indicate that it came from the ocean rather than the Bay beaches.
In the 19th century "Snipe" was a frequently used name for shorebirds especially for those with long beaks. Not only was the Knot known as Robin-Snipe, but Shriner in his Birds of New Jersey (1896) also gives the name "Gray Snipe" and on p. 139 lists seven non-snipes, including Stone Snipe (Yellow Legs), Winter Snipe (Dunlin) and Grass Snipe (Pectoral Sandpiper) though the last two do not have particularly long beaks. Of the Knot he says (p.94) "it has been killed off to a great extent, proving an easy prey for pothunters" and also adds "it feeds on small shell-fish along the beaches," which is does in the Fall. In 1869, William Turnbull published a list of Birds of Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in which he gives the following common names for the Knot: "Red-breasted Sandpiper, Robin Snipe, Ash-coloured Sandpiper, Grey Back, White Robin Snipe in its autumn plumage." He says that it is "common" and "arrives in May on its way north, returning about the middle of August." There is no information about its feeding habits.
Considering the difficulty of traveling in Sth. Jersey before the automobile – Stone talks of days with walks of 10 or more miles - the Delaware Bay was apparently neglected by birding summer residents who preferred the then still mostly unspoiled beaches of the barrier "islands." Horseshoe crabs prefer rough sand beaches and quiet shores over the surf beaten Atlantic coasts. All this information coincides with the numerous maps of "Critical Habitat" in the back of the Status 2007 report that are based on recent surveys. Clearly reflecting the interests of the New jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife for which the report was put together, there are two maps for the Delaware Bay region, one for the Spring and one for the Fall Migrations (## 19-20), the latter showing more critical habitat on the Atlantic beaches. Map #17 shows the habitat for Virginia, one long stretch from Assateague to Fisherman Island, nearly all of it on the Ocean side with a relatively small area on the Chesapeake Bay.
Because I once thought about collecting decoys, I looked into the question raised by the Suttons and Stone's remark. Evidently late 19th century shorebird decoys (unlike duck decoys) are mostly primitive carvings that may disappoint someone who has seen decoys from 1950 and later that increasingly developed into what the trade calls "decorative." These can be exquisite works of craftsmanship, painted with great attention to actual plumage. Antique decoys, their original paint flaked off, look more two-tone and even uniformly dark. The actual shape and size of a shorebird species clearly was not one of the carver's criteria even in the so-called "elegant" type. One catalogue (Old Decoys, from Cary Campbell) has a Black-bellied plover "painted over as a robin snipe" (the folk name for Knot) now looking just dark. It also shows a "dowitcher or yellow legs" of 9.5" in a 2-tone grey; a 10.25" robin snipe, also 2-tone with reddish below and an 11" turnstone "perhaps from Cape May" of which the remaining paint barely imitate the colors of an actual Turnstone. It also has a 13.5" Crowe carved decoy, uniformly dark, from N.J. "very much like shorebirds from the area," which has a broad beak and thus might be modelled on a Knot which has a heavy beak. The Sedge Island Decoys Antiques catalog features a small robin snipe,very dark, with a short bill, with shot marks, as "from South Jersey." The Dayton's on-line catalogue of Nov.2011 has a "black bellied plover, about 1900. from Tuckerton, N.J. with original paint." It's all black underneath and very dark above with some lighter spots imitating a shorebird's back; it's a plover in name only. The current Raven's Way Antiques website in describing a Shute (Cape May Courthouse) carved Blackbellied Plover (1870-1900) says that few Shute decoys have come to market incl. "a couple of Red Knots." The site also shows a 9" robin snipe from Chincoteague, early 20th cent., that is dark above, dark red on throat and breast with off-white to the tail, the bill is longer than a Knot's. There's also a picture of a Rio Grande, N.J. "plover" that's uniformly dark brown with black "feathering" spots, 8.5" and it has an unploverish plump body. All this suggests that around 1900 hunting shorebird decoys were not very species precise and apparently interchangeable all along the East coast, incl. Sth. Jersey.
One of the sources I also looked at was Cassinia, the organ of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, of which Stone had been an editor as well as a club member from its very beginning. Some of its articles give a good impression of the pre-automobile difficulties of birding. For example, the 1903 Christmas count at Cape May Point was done on foot (some participants had no binoculars or only 3 and 4 power ones, i.e. "opera glasses"). J. Fletcher Street (l931/2) writes that the car made all the difference as day trips to the Jersey shore became possible (though even now, with more and better roads my own day trips involve fours of back and forth). Most early field trips, he writes, were to areas around Philadelphia and those to the shore did not begin until the 1920s. Street recounts that Stone, in 1918 or so, ventured the opinion that all but 2 or 3 of a group of members knew nothing concerning shorebirds, a remark that spurred Street on to remedy his shortcomings. Having acquired a cottage on Sea Island, NJ, (i.e. also on the Atlantic rather than on the Delaware Bay) he kept a record of the birds there, a ten year summary of which he published that year; of the Knots he says that they are much commoner (but not in great numbers) in the Spring than in the Fall, but nothing at all about feeding habits. In the 1951 issue these observations are confirmed, but again there's nothing about feeding habits. By then the hunting pressures of the past had been absent for decades and one would have expected reports of larger numbers. In the on-line Indexes to the journal there's also no mention of the horseshoe crab. The general impression gained from the pre-1950 on-line articles is that the DVOC was club of gentlemen from various backgrounds who gradually changed their collecting of skins and eggs (about which there are several stories in the earliest issues) to exchanging mostly random observations. Stone deserves praise for recording these, together with his own, more systematically for Cape May).
At the occasion of Biodiversity Day 2007 the U.N’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre issued a news release on the status of the world population of all six populations of Knots, four of which are declining in numbers. In Europe and the USA the cause is thought to be “drastic habitat changes in the major mudflats” but a significant part of the release discusses the disappearance of large snow free patches in the Arctic breeding ranges, a probable result of global warming which increases precipitation that falls there as snow. In spite of these declines the worldwide status of the Knot is listed as of "least concern." Yet, a release, issued by the Convention on Migratory Species of 8-16-07 reveals that major losses of Knots occurred near the border of Uruguay and Brazil (a place that does not occur in the discussions on Knot migration that I have read), the causes of which are under investigation.
The threat to the rufa Knots has been dramatized in a 2008 documentary that did the rounds on PBS’ Nature series (it was also seen in some European countries). Another question suggested by that documentary is whether it is only the convenient availability of the crabs’ presence in the Bay that makes it the eel's and especially the conch's allegedly preferred food. After all, what did fishermen use for bait before the 1990s when the increased harvest began or in months, before the crabs come to shore or after the surviving crabs returned to the ocean? From my childhood experience, including the catch of our neighbor the fisherman, I know that eels feed on virtually anything, including carcasses of mammals and I think that offal from the chicken slaughter around the Bay would be much appreciated by the eels and conches. I also wonder whether egg bearing female crabs are really more useful than males. There's a good deal of evidence that eels feed on the eggs of alewives and the like (which they suck out) when these move upstream to spawn, in fact it is well known that eel prefer live bait and eel farmers have to accustom elvers to eat their food and the loss of elvers is fairly large during that process. But in the wild fish and crab eggs are "opportunistic" foods. Delaware has a regulation of one half female and one whole male per eel/whelk pot, which indicates that the eggs are not an indispensable food. This I wonder why the many crabs that die after spawning or are turned on their back by wave motions littering the beaches cannot be collected for bait. Perhaps conches that feed normally on clams (and other mollusks) need to have a food supplement because the natural food has declined in the polluted Bay.
As a result of its t.v. time restrictions the PBS documentary focuses too much on the horseshoe crab and the rufa Knots of the Delaware Bay. Carl Safina, The View From Lazy Point, 2011), described how he and an acquaintance attempted to protect horseshoe crabs on Long Island from being taken [probably to be sold to Delaware Bay fishermen]. I have seen dead crabs in many places along the Atlantic coast, for example near Nausett on Cape Cod and even as far inland as the Salt Bay above Damariscotta in Maine where they have to go under the traffic bridge. And Rachel Carson (Edge of the Sea) states that the crab occurs from the Yucatan to new England. Interestingly, Paul Brooks (The House of Life, p.152) relates that the idea for Carson's book may have originated during a walk on Cape Cod by "distinguished literary figures [. . .] somewhat lacking in biological sophistication" who saw the beach covered with horseshoe crabs which they began to return to the sea. A Houghton Mifflin editor who was among them then thought about finding an author who could write "a layman's handbook to the shore."
Anyway, in accordance with the new population research method of counting birds on their winter and summer territories, the film shows the searchers camping out in Tierra del Fuego where the numbers have declined, and on the arctic tundra looking in vain for breeding birds. I have not seen much tundra and that only in Alaska, but have the feeling that a presumed 15,000 pairs of Knots can completely disappear in the vast expanses, a problem that is discussed in Status 2007. Telemetric data (obtained, of course, from a very small number of outfitted birds) give a good illustration of the very wide breeding territory, anywhere from about the 60th to 68th parallel and from the 62th to the 100th degree longitude (fig. 11, p.19). Yet, considering the well established fact of “site fidelity” in many breeding birds, the expectation is that Knots would return to their territories year after year. (Ec.atlas, p. 303). Their absence could be significant evidence of their decline unless the returning birds, finding conditions altered move to more suitable nesting sites, "territorial fidelity" in knots not having been definitely established. Piersma and Lindstrom (cited below) assume that relocation to suitable sites would be normal.
The documentary focuses also on the here and now and as such brings to the attention of a wide public how the fortunes of the crab and the Knot are (have become?) intertwined and affected by human actions e.g. a 2012 post on Manomet.org "Red Knot Protection in Southern Argentina," has examples of promoting more responsible recreational use of the coastal areas where the Knots winter). As would be expected the two Status Reports are more balanced and often discuss the disparities in the data, in particular the divergence in earlier estimates. The authors of Status 2007 (which was published, with an earlier update, in 2008 as #36 of Studies in Avian Biology), present their findings with great scientific integrity. They even address whether their own scientific investigations may pose a threat to the Knots. Such qualifiers as "estimate," "conjecture" and acknowledgements that further research is needed are frequent. Update 2010 "reflects the state of knowledge as of 1 April 2010. . . This material [unlike the 2008 publication] has not been peer-reviewed. We offer it in the interest of timely information exchange among researches, managers and others interested in Red Knot conservation." These statements can of course be used by skeptics to minimize the crisis and a reader of funding proposals may dismiss the "need for further research" as a plea for continued employment of the researchers.. I would say so far, so good. The 2008 recommendations, rather modestly, focus on the conservation of current numbers and habitat improvement. These objectives are significantly at odds with the goals set in the "Executive Summary" of Status 2007 (p.iv) where the goals for 2015[!] are based on the figures of 25 years ago although these have since been corrected downwards. All this does not mean that conservation measures are not warranted, both for the horse crab and the rufa Knot; for ex.: following Canada's example of according the rufa Knot "threatened" status seems a given.
But it still appears to me that a thorough and systematic study of historical evidence, however dispersed, would be useful either for establishing that present developments are less critical because the crabs as well as the Knots have recovered before (thus forestalling the skeptics) or for making the alarm of the environmentalists still more justified. Additionally there remains the decline of the other populations of Knots in other parts of the world (and of other shorebirds, e.g. the almost total disappearance of Red-necked Phalaropes on the Lubec Flats, Me. since the 1990s) which may point to other (man-made?) environmental factors. Numerous studies have been published on the decline of shorebirds. Among these I found Christoph Zockler, et. al. "Wader Populations are declining- how will we elucidate the reasons?" Wader Study Group Bulletin, (2003), 100:202-211, the most balanced. Of the 209 species of waders 92 showed a declining trend of which 79 are among plovers and sandpipers. They concentrate on the gaps in our knowledge about the reasons for that trend. Perhaps the Knot could be treated as the proverbial canary in the mine or the rose at the head of a row of vines, and its decline taken as a warning of the accumulating effect of global environmental degradation (Piersma and Lindstrom. "Migrating shorebirds as integrative sentinels of global environmental change," Ibis (2004), 146 , Suppl.1, 61-69). The relationship between the Horse-show Crab and the Red Knot is well studied but the factors that affect other Knot and shorebird populations may also (additionally) affect the Red Knot.
Meanwhile the Delaware Public Radio station WDDE aired an interview with Kevin Kalish of the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife in which the old numbers do not appear. Instead it's about the alarm caused by the "crash" numbers of 15,000-20,000 and the 2012 estimate of 44,000. Kalish was cautiously optimistic "that there is no extinction risk in the next few years. We have at least stabilized the population." (www.wdde.org/45004, June 1, 2013). However, on May 30 the Manomet Center for Conservation Science posted a newsletter about the resighting of Knot B95 at Mispillion and in the companion article said that the expected number of Knots was 28,000, the same as in 2012. Thus there's a disparity which would be a reason to be less optimistic about the recovery than the number of 44.000.
With apologies to Jonathan Swift as well as Steve Kress, I offer a modest proposal that may help increase the Horse-shoe crab eggs available to the Red Knot. In order to restore the tern populations
at the same time as that of the Puffin, one of the techniques was to turn (and shaking) the eggs of the gulls whose populations had exploded as a result of the open garbage hills of coastal tons in Maine. This markedly reduced the gull population that preyed on the eggs of terns and their hatchlings. A similar program along the Delaware Bay would help reduce the population of Laughing gulls that seem to me to be the major consumer of the crab eggs.
When I taught "Historical Methods" I emphasized that when one does research for an honors thesis, etc. or to make a convincing argument in an exam essay or term paper, one must be aware of and examine all facts, including those that may run counter to one's thesis. Rather than an "on the one hand or the other hand" mind set, the students should consider that each hand has 5 fingers, etc. As I was not very successful, I started to use the example of a trial lawyer who is confronted with an opponent who presents a petition to a judge. The petition is based on precedent, e.g X vs. Y. The trial lawyer has to know this precedent and its context in order to present cases that reject X vs.Y as valid ground for the granting of the petition. In academic research, of course, the idea is not to win (which in courtroom cases may lead to innocents being put in jail, for ex. the recent cases in Illinois). The one-sided "lawyerly" approach is well illustrated by the 2008 biography of Roger Tory Peterson, Birdwatcher, written by a lawyer. She produced a hagiography, glossing over important negative aspects of P's personal relationships etc. that belong in a biography. Then there's the recent biography of Rosalie Edge, the sometime suffragette who later founded Hawk Mountain Sanctuary where I spent countless happy hours. At a conference in Tucson, Ariz., the author called Ms. Edge "the Godmother of the environmental movement" which might be overlooked as hyperbole but for the fact that it alters the history of that movement, of which, for ex. the 19th century George Bird Grinnell was a pioneer. In both cases, I think, we meet an author engaged in sales promotion. A good historian presents, where necessary, the most plausible alternative to a received interpretation to help establish a more accurate picture of the past. On the whole, Historians are less subject to financial and other pressures than scientists some of whose sloppy and even fraudulent research was highlighted by a front page article in the NYT Science Section of April 17, 2012. And Th. Piersma et. al., in The Ecologische atlas van Nederlandse wadvogels (1999),[Ec.atlas] also discuss the problems associated with the "privatization" of research funding (pp. 343-4). Other examples of scientific misconduct are given in an article in the NYT of 10-2-12, p.D3.
I got to thinking about this as I was reading one of my magazines about my favorite subjects, namely birds, nature and their conservation. One topic concerned global warming and in letters to the editor, 2 rejected the idea that there was a crisis and/or that it was man-made. The foundation for this was one-sided, viz. the US Senate Environment and Public Works Comm., which is the domain of the ecologically skeptic Senator Inhofe, as well as data from Native Energy (which promotes clean coal etc.) An example cited was the natural cycle of warming and cooling in the past, which is common place in the debate. One writer said not to worry about the polar bear as they had survived the warm period "when the Norse [the Danes?] were farming Greenland [only a small coastal strip then that is now becoming larger but covered with rising sea water] and the Northwest passage was open?" I wonder which Northwest Passage? The reader might think about the Bering Strait named after a Dane. But when was that open? Not when Bering was looking for it nor in the late 16th century when the Dutch under Barents (there is a Barents Sea north of Siberia) tried to get to the fabled East. Was it when the Indians came out of Siberia to settle in the Americas? Would any one think that it was a break in the ice approximately where the Mississippi Valley is now? Millennia ago! Not, of course, when the reference is to Norse agriculture on Greenland. Though the question about the polar bear during an earlier arctic melt down could be important if we find evidence of such a meltdown before or after the polar bear had evolved from the grizzly.
As to whether modern humans cause global warming I go along with scientists who argue that we are. Previous natural cycles could last as many as 15 centuries and since the last cooling (the so-called "little ice age," ca.1500-1750) not enough time has lapsed to account for the current warming or the current rate of increased warming. The salient factor that is different from earlier warming periods is the recent (since about 1700) expansion of the human population and the even faster increase of modern inventions (since about 1850) that cause the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere which is accompanied by the destruction of forests worldwide that could absorb some of it. The destruction of forests is not only part of the climate change story, but also of the much more general issue of the worldwide human impact on the environment (i.e. habitat destruction). Some of the scientific information has alarmed the U.S. Navy about the melting of the ice in the arctic seas (D. Mackenzie, "Arctic Meltdown," New Scientist, 2002, 2 March:5).
The polar bear reminded me of a more acute question involving another example of our impact on the environment, namely the connection between the increased fishing of horseshoe crabs, beginning in the 1990s in the Delaware Bay and the decline of the rufa subspecies of the Knot Sandpiper that feeds on the crab eggs to store energy for the flight to their arctic breeding grounds. These Knots are called Red Knots in America, but they are actually only one (or two) of the subspecies of Knots that spread as the last ice age began to recede. Alarm bells have been ringing, New Jersey has a moratorium on the harvesting of the crabs and the Audubon Soc. and others are pressing for the bird's endangered status. To come back to my History Methods model: not merely for the obvious scientific reasons, but in particular for public relations' sake, is it important that conservationists in general and defenders of threatened species or of bio-diversity in particular, do not fail in their goals because they appear to neglect information (let alone suppress it) and thus give fodder to the "Inhofes." At 82, I no longer have the drive to do the sort of research I did for my publications in History, but I have gathered some information concerning the sketchy data of the past occurrence of the Red Knots that I could do as a mostly sedentary birder.
But first a summary of the birds' present status for which we have numerous research papers as well as a 2007 collation of these: Status of the Red Knot Calidris canutus in the Western Hemisphere, by L.J.Niles and others, as well as the 2010 Update (resp. Status 2007 and Update 2010). And I did some clicking on the Internet sites of the New Jersey Fish Commission and some of its links, for ex. the www.ceoe.udel.edu/horseshoecrab/regulations/html (udel.edu) where, among other information, one finds the regulations of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).
The debate about the well being of the rufa population of the Knot is fuelled by estimates of 200,000 shorebirds based on aerial counts in the 1980s that were about equally divided between Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings and Semi-palmated Sandpipers, i.e. some 50,000 Knots. Incidentally: were Dunlin, Dowitchers and Black-bellied Plovers overlooked or sorted out? These estimates have since been called into question and the high of the 80s has been corrected to approx. 70,000 shorebirds. Yet the old numbers persist in the literature, for ex. D.M.Buehler, B.I. Tieleman and Th. Piersma (Auk, 2010, 127:394-7) open with: "Hundreds of thousands of shorebirds" occur on spring migration in the Delaware bay. And an article in the NYT of June 5, 2012 that describes the banding, etc. at Reed's Beach, N.J., while noting that this year's count of Knots in the Bay are was about double that of 2011, also states that this is way less than the "100,000 of the 1980s." These numbers may be supported by a report on the udel.edu site "Migratory Shorebirds" stating that according to once-weekly aerial counts in May and on June 5, 2001 "the actual number of shorebirds [. . . ] may surpass one million." Yet, the accompanying graph shows a peak for Semi-palmated Sandpipers at fewer than 200.000 on May 30; fewer than 100,000 Turnstones on 5/23; fewer than 50,000 Dunlin on 5/23 and slightly fewer Knots on the same day, which makes significantly less than half a million birds (but still "hundreds of thousands") by adding the peak days for each of these species; it is hardly an "equal" division among species. Using the term "shorebirds" while talking about Knots seems to create confusion. As I pointed out, "shorebirds" includes more than the four species mentioned above. Also: its use in a discussion of Knots leaves the impression that "hundreds of thousands" rely on the horseshoe crab, which is not the case (see below).
Meanwhile I received a beautifully illustrated "coffee table" book Life Along the Delaware Bay. Cape May, Gateway to a Million Shorebirds. Rutgers U.P., 2012. Written by Lawrence Niles and others, it is illustrated with photographs by Jan van der Kam. Both titles are somewhat misleading as the focus (as can be expected from Lawrence Niles) is primarily on the horseshoe crab and the birds that feed on them an in particular on the Knot (for which Cape May is not a major stop over in either season). It has a pie chart showing the peak aerial count for eight primary species of shorebirds in 2008. The explanation refers to "nearly half a million birds in the 1980s" and "fewer than 150,000 in 2010 of which Knots comprise 9% with Dunlin 31%, Semi-palmated Sandpipers 35% and Ruddy Turnstones 13%. Of these the Knots and Turnstones, according to the relevant chapters, are most dependent on the crab eggs.
Research also focuses on counting the number of a species in its Arctic breeding regions [that are affected by global warming] and in their winter quarters [that are also affected] (Morrison, R.I.G. a.o. “Population Estimates of North American Shorebirds.” Wader Study Group Bull. 111:67-85). Apparently not all knots fly to Argentina, for. ex. some winter also along the Atlantic coast and 60 were observed in Stone Harbor, N.J., in February of 2008 and 66 appeared there on the Bay shore in Jan. of 2012 and in yet another winter there were about 100 on Hereford Inlet near the toll bridge to Wildwood; these may belong to a different population, the roselaari.
The rufa Knots are one of five subspecies all of them apparently only geographically separate populations that spread north eastward after the last Ice Age from a rather small number of survivors of the nominate species, Calidris canutus canutus, that lived then on the tundra in what is now Western Europe. Like the rufa population, these nominate Knots are long distance migrants. They winter on the west coast of Africa and farther south; the Dutch Wadden Sea and the Wash in Norfolk, Engl., are their major foraging areas on migration. (One autumn in the 1950s, a few birding buddies and I witnessed a flight of Knots that numbered in the 10s of thousands as they sought higher ground in the Wadden Sea. Apparently they were only a portion of the Knots there). The five subspecies split at different stages as the ice receded. Two of them (Piersmai and Rogersi) breed in northern Siberia, while two others, the Roselaari and Rufa populations spread to Alaska and the Canadian tundra. However these splits occurred, a large population, the Islandica separated from the Canutus in Europe and moved northwest to Iceland, Greenland and the easternmost Canadian archipelago (Ec.atlas, p.144). Observing them from a distance, even now with a scope, I have never been able to distinguish either the Islandica from the nominate in Holland or the Rufa from the Roselaari on the Delaware Bay. I am not the only one having problems, for ex. the Petersen and Burrows Birds of New England (2004) warn against confusion with several other shorebirds (they also note that small numbers of Knots winter along the coasts of Southern New England). I was much relieved when I saw a photo (Status, 2007, p. 9) of two handheld Knots one of which "is believed to be a roselaari." Throughout the Status report its authors refer to the "taxonomic uncertainty" about the populations in the USA (incl. Alaska where Roselaari may be joined by Siberian Rogersi Knots). In the past all these Knots had one name: Tringa islandica. Like other birds, Knots are subject to many problems, for ex. Evans and Penkovski (1984) estimate a 20-30% survival rate of 1st year birds and Baker and Baker (1973) found only a 40-50% fledging success.
I had never seen more than "hundreds" of shorebirds together at one time in May and early June along the Delaware Bay beaches. Even adding the various groups at several spots they numbered perhaps a few thousands, only a small number of Knots among them. When they are feeding on the eggs it is difficult to keep them apart from behind the fences that now protect the spawning horseshoe crabs in many places on the Jersey side. The Delaware Rare Bird Alert recorded 6,000 Knots on a roost near Mispillion at the end of May in 2011, most of which any birder could observe. When feeding, the birds jostle each other onward or out of the way and some, having ended up on the back of the spawning crabs confound my attempts to identify those on the other side. In their feeding frenzy they appear oblivious to their surroundings. The first time I saw this phenomenon was on the then still very small beach at the Forsythe (Brigantine) NWR. We stood together with several other birders on the dyke right above the egg laying crabs and the gorging birds. They were nearly all Semi-palmated Sandpipers, perhaps a hundred, pressed together so closely that one could see no sand between them and the crabs. The few Dunlin and Turnstones stayed out of the fray and fed on the edges among the Laughing Gulls; no Knots. Actually among the flocks I see each spring on the beaches, the Semi-palmated Sandpipers are always the most numerous though in some spots Turnstones dominate, like on the beach remnants along the rock reinforced road at Port Mahon in Delaware. When I am there Knots are rare, for ex. on May 18, 2012 I found nine along the road, but the Del. Shorebird Project people located 200 in the entire area (along with 2000 Semi-palmated Sandpipers of which I saw fewer than 100, 1500 Ruddy Turnstones of which I saw about 500 and 20 Sanderlings, of which I saw 11). There were also 8 Willets and about 200 Laughing Gulls and some 100 Dunlin in two flocks, one of which on the mudflats where the road curbs along the shore (these were not mentioned by the Project). It was low tide and although one day before the full moon, there were hardly any crabs along the road, which was surprising because two weeks earlier there were about 100 crabs trying to find a beach. While the shorebirds feed on fresh eggs before they fly on to the Arctic, not all the remaining eggs hatch in the summer, some take several months and so we saw in late September 2009 a flock of about 50 Turnstones and 20 Sanderlings feeding in the “May mode” on a rare clean patch of gravelly beach at Port Mahon.
Away from the beaches, especially at high tides, large numbers of shorebirds may gather to roost in impoundments, as was the case on April 20, 2012 at Bombay Hook (Del.) when I estimated the various separate groups of a few hundred at more than 2,000 all together; a flock of less than 100 Black-bellied Plovers was off by itself on dry mud in Bear Swamp, but in the other pools three groups of Dunlin contained also quite a few Short-billed Dowitchers, Lesser Yellow Legs and some smaller peeps, but two flocks, one of them of several hundred, of Semi-palmated Sandpipers were off by themselves. The size of these flocks looked most impressive when they all wheeled about in the air as a Harrier tried its luck. During the next two weeks the Del.RBA still mentioned thousands of shorebirds there. On May 18, at low tide several thousand actively foraging birds were mostly spread out on the mudflats across from Shearness including hundreds of Black-bellied Plover and Dunlin; as expected for mudflats, there were no horseshoe crabs in evidence. For the week of 4/25/12 the Del. Rba reported 7,000 Knots, 5,000 Dunlin, 10,000 Semi-Palms, 1,000 Sanderling and 2,000 Sh-billed Dow., at Mispillion; at the Ted Harvey area there were 2,500 Knots, 3,800 Dunlin, 6,000 Semi-palms, 2,500 Sh-billed Dow. This adds up to 40,300 shorebirds (Ruddy Turnstones or other shorebirds were not included in the reports from either place). The Delaware Shorebird Project, noting on 5/29 that shorebird numbers were greatly diminished, reported for Mispillion 50 to100 Knots, 2,000 Ruddy Turnstones, 1,500 Sanderling, 14,000 Semi-palms and small numbers of Dunlin and Sh-billed Dowitchers. We were along Rte 9 and Bombay Hook, not at any beach, on 5/31 at low tide and saw about 750 Semi-palms spread out over the mud (flying in small separate flocks of about 50 when moving), 2 Black-bellied and 3 Semi-palmated Plovers, 1 White-Rumped Sandp., and perhaps 20 Dunlin. Although the crabs prefer gravelly sandy beaches to lay their eggs, once again we scoped the mudflats that were open to the Delaware Bay and found no evidence of Horsehoe Crabs (and never any Knots). Thus while tens of thousands of shorebirds stop over on the Bay, most do not depend on the crab eggs and large numbers clearly do not feed near the "horseshoe beaches."
In 2014, Colette and I spent May 19-21 in N.J. and Delaware. We started with the Forsythe NWR which after super storm Sandy has a larger sandy stretch along the Southern dike, but we saw few crabs and no Knots. It was low tide and were 100s of Semi-palmated Sandpipers, some twenty Turnstones, a few Dowitchers were foraging in the mud and shallow channels, while the Dunlin were mostly in the impoundment along the North dike. By the time we got to Nummy Island it was high tide and shorebirds were hard to find in the tall saltmarsh grass that was high enough to hide a foraging Tri-colored heron when it stepped into a channel. The next day we stopped off at Reed's Beach where on the southern beach there were plenty of crabs, a few thousand Laughing Gulls and lots of shorebirds, including Knots. But even at 60x the clustered shorebirds were difficult to keep apart. At the North end, there were also lots of crabs, but only 3 Knots among the hundreds of Gulls. In the afternoon we had more success at Cook Beach (which is below Reed's) where the fence is closer to the shorebird roost. But the best views we had the next day at Mispillion, on the Delaware side. According to one of the researcher Colette talked with there were some 1500 Knots roosting on several sand spits and the jetty and thousands of such other shorebirds as Turnstones, Dunlin, Sanderlin and Semi-palmated sandpipers as well as the ever present Laughing Gulls. We did not visit any of the other Delaware Bay beaches, but at Bombay Hook there were a larger numbers of Semi-palms and Dowitchers on the mudflats.
To me, this kind of evidence is among the most spellbinding as it raises questions about the rhythm of nature, the life of birds, the timing of their migration, the choice of the Delaware Bay rather than some other place where there also are horseshoe crabs, or what will happen if the crabs, these fossils of earlier stages of evolution, really disappeared. Current studies are mostly focused on the taking of the crabs for bait by eel and conch fishermen or for medical research which uses their blood since it was discovered, in 1956, that the crabs have an inbuilt blood-clotting mechanism which acts like a primitive immune system. These crabs have a 90% survival rate when they are returned to the sea (Post "LAL Research" on udel.edu). A "soundbite" item in the Nat. Geographic Mag. for August 2011, pp 28-29, states that 500,000 crabs are caught each year along the US coast, They take 20% of the blood of each crab, after which they are returned to the ocean where they have a 15% survival rate, which means that 75,000 don't make it. A post (2 Febr.,’03) on the Delaware Audubon website painted a dismal picture: from an estimated 80,000 Knots on the Bay in 1998, the number fell to about 30,000 in 2002 and the Knot was thought to have a 54% survival rate [for the Bay population?]. In the post "Shorebird Recovery Project" at Manomet.org [2008?] it is estimated that the Red Knot "will become extinct by 2010." As reported in the NYT article cited earlier, this fortunately has not happened and the Manomet post should have been updated. A 2012 post at Manomet.org (Shorebird Recovery) giving a graph of the decline for several species states that the Knot population declined to 15,000 from 50.000 in 1985. Somehow the numbers do not appear to add up.
Such declines may seem hard to believe and since the Morrison article, more research has been done on the accuracy of counting birds by European ornithologists. They found that the average error for flocks of roosting birds was 37% and 17% for flying flocks. Status 2007 makes it clear that recent counters, incl. Morrison himself, are fully aware of these possible errors. (37% or 1/3 of 150,000 equals 50,000 or the alleged total of 1985). Some annual fluctuations in the numbers cannot be explained by counting errors; other explanations are unfortunately still hypothetical. Aerial counting has the further disadvantage that small wader species are difficult to identify, though on the Bay the larger size of the Knots may help. Still, even if the Delaware Bay figures are only approximate but show a long term trend they are alarming indeed and crab conservation measures may be coming too late, partly because crabs take about eight or more years to reach the egg laying stage.
Obviously there remains a lingering confusion about the actual numbers. Apparently researchers, writers, much less reporters, do not spend much effort in weeding out the received data from later and more accurate ones. I have given sone examples above, but here is another one from Birdlife International (2010) whose www.Birdlife.org/datazone/sowb/casestudy/23 on the impact of shellfisheries states that at one time there were 150,000-100,000 and "now as few as 18,000" Knots while referring to Status 2007 (for the later number?).
As I indicated, we don’t have horseshoe crabs in Holland and thousands of Knots (both the Canutus and Islandica subspecies) feed in the Wadden Sea area on small cockles. Over-harvesting of cockles, it is thought, caused the drastic decline in the number of the nominate Knots, but not as much of the Islandica subspecies that feed on the same prey. This may be because the nominate species (from the Eurasian tundra) arrive after the Islandica (from Greenland and Canada) and thus find fewer prey. The destruction of cockle beds in the Wadden Sea resulted from fishing with suction dredges which increased the yield of cockles some forty times to 80,000 tons in 1989 over the older trawling methods. This type of fishing was outlawed in 2004, but by then the damage was done. Similar shellfish harvesting problems existed on the Wash. Considering that there are many other small prey like Baltic tellins, sand gapers and so forth in the Wadden Sea, I wonder why the disappearance of one shellfish could have such a drastic effect, unless the dredging disturbed the bottom habitat for these other prey as well.
I have also wondered whether rufa Knots could switch to another source of food. The rufa that winter in Patagonia, like other long-distance migrants (for ex. Bar-tailed Godwits and the canutus Knots in Europe), undergo physiological changes to reduce their weight before they undertake their northward flight. Among these is a change in their digestive system which prevents the Rufa from feeding on mollusks and makes it convenient for them that there are crab eggs. It would take extra time for the digestive system to change back, up to six days, before they could use the other food on which Dunlin etc. forage. It is argued that the birds need to regain the body weight they lost during the flight from the wintering grounds and a delay needed to change the digestive system would retard their return to the Arctic where there is only a short window to breed. Of the six populations of Knots only the Rufa has come to rely on the horseshoe crab. There is, nevertheless, important evidence provided by research done on the Virginia barrier islands, where some 13,000 Knots feed on the way north and that are apparently not dependent on the horseshoe crab (F.M. Smith and others, 2008); a summary of which is an addendum to Update 2010. Status 2007 (2008) discusses the Va counts in detail, going back to the late '70s - the era of high counts - when on May 20, 1978, 8,000 were counted on Metompkin Island alone. Their more recent numbers are larger than that of the alleged Roselaari populations that winter in northern Brazil or Florida and that might move up the coast in Spring; thus these Virginia Knots are likely to be Rufa. I have not found evidence for my suspicion that Virginia's Knot numbers are used to justify its opposition to the ASMFC harvest thresholds of the crabs. There is also some evidence that Knots from Caribbean areas may use the interior (and crabless) flyway from Texas to Saskatchewan. This may be corroborated by John Krider who in his [hunting] Notes (1879) states that they stop "for a day or two in Iowa, feeding along the slough."
I was interested to read in Clay and Pat Sutton’s Birds and Birding at Cape May (2008), a book that I much enjoyed, that in the late 19th century horseshoe crabs (in the Delaware bay?) had also been faced with extinction. They were nearly fished out of existence for fertilizer and it took many decades for the survivors to repopulate the Delaware Bay. In all my reading on the alarming state of the Bay, I found no reference to that kind of depletion of the crabs other than the fact that by the middle of the 20th century, when the crab population nearly collapsed, artificial fertilizers and other changes in agriculture reduced the need for the crabs (just as it reduced the use of alewives as fertilizer in New England). In the post "Fertilizer" (udel.edu) one learns that the number of crabs remained at about 1.5 million from the 1880s to the 1920s. The post "Regulations" on udel.edu cites a report that in 1857 the "entire strand of beach" was covered for miles with the crabs and it shows a foto from the early 1980s illustrating a similar event. Recently, as I hobbled down the stairs to the bathroom in a Lewes, Del., restaurant I noticed a black and white photograph among the historical pictures on the walls of a gigantic pile of Horse-shoe crab shells: unexpected evidence of their overfishing. Apparently between 1960 and 1980 their number was relatively constant at 2.3 to 4.1 million. Demand for eels from Japan in the 1970s and later for conch, mainly from Sth-east Asia, led to a rapid increase of the crab harvest in the 1990s. Fortunately, ASMFC regulations have led to significant reductions in the numbers taken for bait.
Because my mind has been professionally focused on critically examining received theories (in history), several specific questions occurred to me while reading the Suttons' discussion. Among these are: what did the Knots feed on in those allegedly horseshoe-crabless years? Were there great numbers before the overfishing? Did they feed instead on small mollusks like those seen farther south? And by the way: does the physiological change of the stomach occur also before their southward migration or do they then stop to forage more frequently and longer in one place than on their way north because there is no hurry to find a nesting place? The Suttons report also that the absence of old Knot decoys indicates that there may not have been enough Knots for the hunters to bother making them.
In a odd fit of nostalgia for the days of research for my publications (in the History of Ideas), I perused some of the earlier writers (among my own books) that could have been familiar to Witmer Stone, on whose Bird Studies of Old Cape May (1937) the Suttons relied for for much of their historical data. None of these writers mention horseshoe crabs, which may be because they focus on the southbound migration (August-October), all of them blame the near demise of the Knots around 1900 on market hunters “in the old days,” (Nat. Geogr. Book of Birds, 1932). Eaton, (Birds of New York, 1910) says they are more common in the fall [on Long Island] when “they return in large flocks” than in the spring and Forbush, (Birds of Massachusetts and Other New England States, 1925), noting that the Eurasian and American “forms” were recently split [into two populations], says that “in the days of our grandparents [they occurred] on Cape Cod by the thousand” but were rare by 1900. Knight’s 1908 Birds of Maine supports these findings: they are generally uncommon but more numerous in the fall when there are plenty on the mudflats near Calais; they occur between May 24 and June 11 and return from August through September. The greater number in the Fall than the Spring is the reverse of the modern data for the Delaware Bay. Though these older sources talk about the southbound migration for the autumn, beginning in August, the July 5, 2012, Delaware RBA mentioned about 100 Knots. (This fuels my wonder at the rhythm of nature with shorebirds leaving the Bay in the 1st week of June and returning already in the 1st week of July. And they are not all non-breeding adults, for some were "still" in breeding plumage). These early publications all make use of data from the Proceedings of Bird Clubs, Scientific Societies and Reports from the various Boards of Agriculture. A note in the Jnl of the Maine Ornithological Society (1900:54-55) also bewails the "empty beaches." Stone in 1937, appears to rely almost exclusively on hunting lore. Through his leading career at the Philadelphia Academy of Science, etc. Stone could have had access to any number of 19th century sources . For ex. I wonder what lies hidden in the archives of the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife, that go back to 1870 (www.state.nj.us/fgw/history.htm).
Stone says “as they [Dowitchers and Knots, flocking together] decoyed easily they most nearly approached extermination” at the turn of the century, but suspects the picture may be not be that bleak. This statement may explain why there are no old specific knot decoys, a generic large shorebird one may have done the job. Moreover, 19th Cent. sources often refer to the Knot's unwary behavior so that decoys may not have been necessary. Stone too concentrates on the southbound migration (which may be the result of his mostly summer observations and the hunters he then talked too) and he focuses on the Atlantic beaches and adjacent marshlands. Though he also observed them feeding in May, neither he nor Charles Urner, his correspondent for the Brigantine beach to the north mention horse shoe crabs; the numbers they give are only in the hundreds. The authors cited above describe their food as mollusks, crustaceans, sea-worms and insects which may be less the result of observation than of stomach content of shot birds in the autumn, for in the 19th century much attention was given to the question of a bird's usefulness to combat the generally held view of birds as pests. I wonder whether the pothunters were at it all year or whether they concentrated on the fall migration when numbers were large and farming tasks fewer. I am thinking about the British game law of 1831 that set hunting seasons for game birds from August through January.
A colleague and friend who collects prints drew my attention to Alexander Wilson whose American Ornithology is a pioneering work, much of which can be retrieved on the internet. In the 1840, 3 vol. edition by Thomas Mayo Brewer "with notes by [Sir William] Jardine," (the Scottish naturalist) a later editor wrote: "of this prettily marked species I can find no description . . . The common name on our seacoast is the Gray Back . . . [and it occurs] in small flocks on the sand flats." This is followed by a description of the Red-breasted Snipe, i.e. the Dowitcher. But in Alexander Wilson. The Scot Who Founder American Ornithology, (2013), the authors cite (pp 182-4) two descriptions of the knot, one the "Ash-colored Sandpiper, Tringa cinerea," which is the Knot in winter dress and the other the "Red-breasted Sandpiper, Tringa rufa" for the Knot in breeding plumage. . . . its favorite food, which is the small, thin, oval, bivalve shell fish of white or pearl color, and not larger than the seed of an apple.[which] must be extremely nutritious, for almost all those tribes [of sandpipers?] that feed on them are at this season [May] mere lumps of fat." I wonder whether these small white pearls were really shell fish rather than the eggs of the horse shoe crab. But in his description of the Ruddy Turnstone, which he calls a "rare species," Wilson mentions that in Cape May and Egg Harbor they are "known by the name of the Horse-foot Snipe from its living almost entirely on the eggs" of the crab, which is in fact what Knots do as well. It is likely that the "gunners" whom he mentions sometimes as sources, may have given him anecdotal information, which seems to indicate that it came from the ocean rather than the Bay beaches.
In the 19th century "Snipe" was a frequently used name for shorebirds especially for those with long beaks. Not only was the Knot known as Robin-Snipe, but Shriner in his Birds of New Jersey (1896) also gives the name "Gray Snipe" and on p. 139 lists seven non-snipes, including Stone Snipe (Yellow Legs), Winter Snipe (Dunlin) and Grass Snipe (Pectoral Sandpiper) though the last two do not have particularly long beaks. Of the Knot he says (p.94) "it has been killed off to a great extent, proving an easy prey for pothunters" and also adds "it feeds on small shell-fish along the beaches," which is does in the Fall. In 1869, William Turnbull published a list of Birds of Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in which he gives the following common names for the Knot: "Red-breasted Sandpiper, Robin Snipe, Ash-coloured Sandpiper, Grey Back, White Robin Snipe in its autumn plumage." He says that it is "common" and "arrives in May on its way north, returning about the middle of August." There is no information about its feeding habits.
Considering the difficulty of traveling in Sth. Jersey before the automobile – Stone talks of days with walks of 10 or more miles - the Delaware Bay was apparently neglected by birding summer residents who preferred the then still mostly unspoiled beaches of the barrier "islands." Horseshoe crabs prefer rough sand beaches and quiet shores over the surf beaten Atlantic coasts. All this information coincides with the numerous maps of "Critical Habitat" in the back of the Status 2007 report that are based on recent surveys. Clearly reflecting the interests of the New jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife for which the report was put together, there are two maps for the Delaware Bay region, one for the Spring and one for the Fall Migrations (## 19-20), the latter showing more critical habitat on the Atlantic beaches. Map #17 shows the habitat for Virginia, one long stretch from Assateague to Fisherman Island, nearly all of it on the Ocean side with a relatively small area on the Chesapeake Bay.
Because I once thought about collecting decoys, I looked into the question raised by the Suttons and Stone's remark. Evidently late 19th century shorebird decoys (unlike duck decoys) are mostly primitive carvings that may disappoint someone who has seen decoys from 1950 and later that increasingly developed into what the trade calls "decorative." These can be exquisite works of craftsmanship, painted with great attention to actual plumage. Antique decoys, their original paint flaked off, look more two-tone and even uniformly dark. The actual shape and size of a shorebird species clearly was not one of the carver's criteria even in the so-called "elegant" type. One catalogue (Old Decoys, from Cary Campbell) has a Black-bellied plover "painted over as a robin snipe" (the folk name for Knot) now looking just dark. It also shows a "dowitcher or yellow legs" of 9.5" in a 2-tone grey; a 10.25" robin snipe, also 2-tone with reddish below and an 11" turnstone "perhaps from Cape May" of which the remaining paint barely imitate the colors of an actual Turnstone. It also has a 13.5" Crowe carved decoy, uniformly dark, from N.J. "very much like shorebirds from the area," which has a broad beak and thus might be modelled on a Knot which has a heavy beak. The Sedge Island Decoys Antiques catalog features a small robin snipe,very dark, with a short bill, with shot marks, as "from South Jersey." The Dayton's on-line catalogue of Nov.2011 has a "black bellied plover, about 1900. from Tuckerton, N.J. with original paint." It's all black underneath and very dark above with some lighter spots imitating a shorebird's back; it's a plover in name only. The current Raven's Way Antiques website in describing a Shute (Cape May Courthouse) carved Blackbellied Plover (1870-1900) says that few Shute decoys have come to market incl. "a couple of Red Knots." The site also shows a 9" robin snipe from Chincoteague, early 20th cent., that is dark above, dark red on throat and breast with off-white to the tail, the bill is longer than a Knot's. There's also a picture of a Rio Grande, N.J. "plover" that's uniformly dark brown with black "feathering" spots, 8.5" and it has an unploverish plump body. All this suggests that around 1900 hunting shorebird decoys were not very species precise and apparently interchangeable all along the East coast, incl. Sth. Jersey.
One of the sources I also looked at was Cassinia, the organ of the Delaware Valley Ornithological Club, of which Stone had been an editor as well as a club member from its very beginning. Some of its articles give a good impression of the pre-automobile difficulties of birding. For example, the 1903 Christmas count at Cape May Point was done on foot (some participants had no binoculars or only 3 and 4 power ones, i.e. "opera glasses"). J. Fletcher Street (l931/2) writes that the car made all the difference as day trips to the Jersey shore became possible (though even now, with more and better roads my own day trips involve fours of back and forth). Most early field trips, he writes, were to areas around Philadelphia and those to the shore did not begin until the 1920s. Street recounts that Stone, in 1918 or so, ventured the opinion that all but 2 or 3 of a group of members knew nothing concerning shorebirds, a remark that spurred Street on to remedy his shortcomings. Having acquired a cottage on Sea Island, NJ, (i.e. also on the Atlantic rather than on the Delaware Bay) he kept a record of the birds there, a ten year summary of which he published that year; of the Knots he says that they are much commoner (but not in great numbers) in the Spring than in the Fall, but nothing at all about feeding habits. In the 1951 issue these observations are confirmed, but again there's nothing about feeding habits. By then the hunting pressures of the past had been absent for decades and one would have expected reports of larger numbers. In the on-line Indexes to the journal there's also no mention of the horseshoe crab. The general impression gained from the pre-1950 on-line articles is that the DVOC was club of gentlemen from various backgrounds who gradually changed their collecting of skins and eggs (about which there are several stories in the earliest issues) to exchanging mostly random observations. Stone deserves praise for recording these, together with his own, more systematically for Cape May).
At the occasion of Biodiversity Day 2007 the U.N’s World Conservation Monitoring Centre issued a news release on the status of the world population of all six populations of Knots, four of which are declining in numbers. In Europe and the USA the cause is thought to be “drastic habitat changes in the major mudflats” but a significant part of the release discusses the disappearance of large snow free patches in the Arctic breeding ranges, a probable result of global warming which increases precipitation that falls there as snow. In spite of these declines the worldwide status of the Knot is listed as of "least concern." Yet, a release, issued by the Convention on Migratory Species of 8-16-07 reveals that major losses of Knots occurred near the border of Uruguay and Brazil (a place that does not occur in the discussions on Knot migration that I have read), the causes of which are under investigation.
The threat to the rufa Knots has been dramatized in a 2008 documentary that did the rounds on PBS’ Nature series (it was also seen in some European countries). Another question suggested by that documentary is whether it is only the convenient availability of the crabs’ presence in the Bay that makes it the eel's and especially the conch's allegedly preferred food. After all, what did fishermen use for bait before the 1990s when the increased harvest began or in months, before the crabs come to shore or after the surviving crabs returned to the ocean? From my childhood experience, including the catch of our neighbor the fisherman, I know that eels feed on virtually anything, including carcasses of mammals and I think that offal from the chicken slaughter around the Bay would be much appreciated by the eels and conches. I also wonder whether egg bearing female crabs are really more useful than males. There's a good deal of evidence that eels feed on the eggs of alewives and the like (which they suck out) when these move upstream to spawn, in fact it is well known that eel prefer live bait and eel farmers have to accustom elvers to eat their food and the loss of elvers is fairly large during that process. But in the wild fish and crab eggs are "opportunistic" foods. Delaware has a regulation of one half female and one whole male per eel/whelk pot, which indicates that the eggs are not an indispensable food. This I wonder why the many crabs that die after spawning or are turned on their back by wave motions littering the beaches cannot be collected for bait. Perhaps conches that feed normally on clams (and other mollusks) need to have a food supplement because the natural food has declined in the polluted Bay.
As a result of its t.v. time restrictions the PBS documentary focuses too much on the horseshoe crab and the rufa Knots of the Delaware Bay. Carl Safina, The View From Lazy Point, 2011), described how he and an acquaintance attempted to protect horseshoe crabs on Long Island from being taken [probably to be sold to Delaware Bay fishermen]. I have seen dead crabs in many places along the Atlantic coast, for example near Nausett on Cape Cod and even as far inland as the Salt Bay above Damariscotta in Maine where they have to go under the traffic bridge. And Rachel Carson (Edge of the Sea) states that the crab occurs from the Yucatan to new England. Interestingly, Paul Brooks (The House of Life, p.152) relates that the idea for Carson's book may have originated during a walk on Cape Cod by "distinguished literary figures [. . .] somewhat lacking in biological sophistication" who saw the beach covered with horseshoe crabs which they began to return to the sea. A Houghton Mifflin editor who was among them then thought about finding an author who could write "a layman's handbook to the shore."
Anyway, in accordance with the new population research method of counting birds on their winter and summer territories, the film shows the searchers camping out in Tierra del Fuego where the numbers have declined, and on the arctic tundra looking in vain for breeding birds. I have not seen much tundra and that only in Alaska, but have the feeling that a presumed 15,000 pairs of Knots can completely disappear in the vast expanses, a problem that is discussed in Status 2007. Telemetric data (obtained, of course, from a very small number of outfitted birds) give a good illustration of the very wide breeding territory, anywhere from about the 60th to 68th parallel and from the 62th to the 100th degree longitude (fig. 11, p.19). Yet, considering the well established fact of “site fidelity” in many breeding birds, the expectation is that Knots would return to their territories year after year. (Ec.atlas, p. 303). Their absence could be significant evidence of their decline unless the returning birds, finding conditions altered move to more suitable nesting sites, "territorial fidelity" in knots not having been definitely established. Piersma and Lindstrom (cited below) assume that relocation to suitable sites would be normal.
The documentary focuses also on the here and now and as such brings to the attention of a wide public how the fortunes of the crab and the Knot are (have become?) intertwined and affected by human actions e.g. a 2012 post on Manomet.org "Red Knot Protection in Southern Argentina," has examples of promoting more responsible recreational use of the coastal areas where the Knots winter). As would be expected the two Status Reports are more balanced and often discuss the disparities in the data, in particular the divergence in earlier estimates. The authors of Status 2007 (which was published, with an earlier update, in 2008 as #36 of Studies in Avian Biology), present their findings with great scientific integrity. They even address whether their own scientific investigations may pose a threat to the Knots. Such qualifiers as "estimate," "conjecture" and acknowledgements that further research is needed are frequent. Update 2010 "reflects the state of knowledge as of 1 April 2010. . . This material [unlike the 2008 publication] has not been peer-reviewed. We offer it in the interest of timely information exchange among researches, managers and others interested in Red Knot conservation." These statements can of course be used by skeptics to minimize the crisis and a reader of funding proposals may dismiss the "need for further research" as a plea for continued employment of the researchers.. I would say so far, so good. The 2008 recommendations, rather modestly, focus on the conservation of current numbers and habitat improvement. These objectives are significantly at odds with the goals set in the "Executive Summary" of Status 2007 (p.iv) where the goals for 2015[!] are based on the figures of 25 years ago although these have since been corrected downwards. All this does not mean that conservation measures are not warranted, both for the horse crab and the rufa Knot; for ex.: following Canada's example of according the rufa Knot "threatened" status seems a given.
But it still appears to me that a thorough and systematic study of historical evidence, however dispersed, would be useful either for establishing that present developments are less critical because the crabs as well as the Knots have recovered before (thus forestalling the skeptics) or for making the alarm of the environmentalists still more justified. Additionally there remains the decline of the other populations of Knots in other parts of the world (and of other shorebirds, e.g. the almost total disappearance of Red-necked Phalaropes on the Lubec Flats, Me. since the 1990s) which may point to other (man-made?) environmental factors. Numerous studies have been published on the decline of shorebirds. Among these I found Christoph Zockler, et. al. "Wader Populations are declining- how will we elucidate the reasons?" Wader Study Group Bulletin, (2003), 100:202-211, the most balanced. Of the 209 species of waders 92 showed a declining trend of which 79 are among plovers and sandpipers. They concentrate on the gaps in our knowledge about the reasons for that trend. Perhaps the Knot could be treated as the proverbial canary in the mine or the rose at the head of a row of vines, and its decline taken as a warning of the accumulating effect of global environmental degradation (Piersma and Lindstrom. "Migrating shorebirds as integrative sentinels of global environmental change," Ibis (2004), 146 , Suppl.1, 61-69). The relationship between the Horse-show Crab and the Red Knot is well studied but the factors that affect other Knot and shorebird populations may also (additionally) affect the Red Knot.
Meanwhile the Delaware Public Radio station WDDE aired an interview with Kevin Kalish of the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife in which the old numbers do not appear. Instead it's about the alarm caused by the "crash" numbers of 15,000-20,000 and the 2012 estimate of 44,000. Kalish was cautiously optimistic "that there is no extinction risk in the next few years. We have at least stabilized the population." (www.wdde.org/45004, June 1, 2013). However, on May 30 the Manomet Center for Conservation Science posted a newsletter about the resighting of Knot B95 at Mispillion and in the companion article said that the expected number of Knots was 28,000, the same as in 2012. Thus there's a disparity which would be a reason to be less optimistic about the recovery than the number of 44.000.
With apologies to Jonathan Swift as well as Steve Kress, I offer a modest proposal that may help increase the Horse-shoe crab eggs available to the Red Knot. In order to restore the tern populations
at the same time as that of the Puffin, one of the techniques was to turn (and shaking) the eggs of the gulls whose populations had exploded as a result of the open garbage hills of coastal tons in Maine. This markedly reduced the gull population that preyed on the eggs of terns and their hatchlings. A similar program along the Delaware Bay would help reduce the population of Laughing gulls that seem to me to be the major consumer of the crab eggs.
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