It's Not Just Knots

Not good news for shorebird fans. In an article in the Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger, we learn that The Red Knot is Not Alone in Its Plight. The Red Knot, holder of the record for longest migration by a North American shorebird, has been suffering precipitous declines over the last 14 years due to the over harvesting of Horseshoe Crabs on Delaware Bay. Now it appears that Semipalmated Sandpiper numbers are in serious decline, too.

In the 1980s, about 2 million semipalmated were counted by researchers on the 4,000-mile coastline of Suriname and neighboring French Guiana, where scientists say 85 percent of the world's population of the bird winters annually. Last month, only 400,000 of the birds were found in aerial surveys by the New Jersey Audubon expedition.

"We had already found a 50 percent decline over 15 years by 2006. Now, this is a 70 to 80 percent decline since the survey in the 1980s. I think it's alarming," said David Mizrahi, the team leader.

The problem, he said, appears to be in the Delaware Bay -- also the controversial source of the red knot's troubles.

-- Brian T. Murray, Star-Ledger Staff

The nearly 80% decline compares to the approximately 90% decline in Red Knots. The researchers note that, while no studies have been done on breeding grounds for the semipalms, they have been done in Knot breeding areas and nothing exists there that would explain the decline. And nothing on either species wintering grounds can be pointed to which might explain the declines, either. So that leaves Delaware Bay, the one location shared by both species. It has been reported that crab numbers were up last year, so there may be hope, but for now we have two species to worry about going extinct because of greed (and while I don't have a link, I also heard somewhere that Sanderlings in eastern North America are in decline as well). It will be interesting to see what happens this May when the birds arrive on the bay.