Home Conserving Wildlife 20 Years on Delaware Bay – Shorebirds lift off to an uncertain end

20 Years on Delaware Bay – Shorebirds lift off to an uncertain end

by Larry Niles
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Red knot by James Fiorentino

 

Shorebirds lift off to an uncertain end

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I am reviewing a new paper by Sjoerd Duijns, a student working on the benefits of being a fat shorebird.   Still, a draft, the paper analyses data from radio-tagged red knots leaving the bay in good and poor condition (ie more or less fat.  Sjoerd found birds may leave later from Delaware Bay than lighter birds but arrive earlier in the breeding grounds because they can pick the best time to leave. They are also more likely to breed successfully and survive the Arctic breeding season to the following fall.  In other words being a fat knot on Delaware Bay makes life good.

So in light of this new information, how did the red knots and other shorebirds fare in this year’s Delaware Bay Stopover.  One’s judgment cannot be firm, with so many unknowns, but here’s a working biologist’s best guess.

By all accounts it was one of the worst years in recent memory, but with a twist that offers a glimmer of hope.

First, the bay’s water reflected an unusually cool May and never really warmed to the levels necessary for a really good horseshoe crab spawn until the very end.  This caused odd occurrences of crab spawning.  For example, crabs breed in greater densities in the southern parts of the bay this year, more than in previous years.  The spawn at Norburys Landing just south of the commercial oyster aquaculture development zone (ADZ) was one of the best this year, and knots and other shorebirds used the area in great number. One can only guess the water temperatures warmed over the wide inter-tidal flats provided just enough to elicit spawning.  The same process was true of all the creeks on the bay.

 

Laughing Gulls and shorebirds feast on horseshoe crab eggs at Norburys Landing just south of the Aquaculture Development Zone. (below)The southern portion of the bay was much more important this year because waters warmed faster on the large intertidal shelf of this portion of the bay.

 

Second the knot numbers never really climbed to the levels of the last three years.  I’m guessing this was illusory, a consequence of the count being done on two days at the peak.  It’s likely many more birds came to the bay and seeing many birds for too few eggs, left for better resources elsewhere.  Those that left were probably short distance winterers, those from relatively close wintering areas like Florida and other nearby areas.  The bay’s horseshoe crab eggs would help them too, but they can get by on Atlantic Coast clams and mussels.  The long-distance shorebirds, those migrating from southern South America,  need the bay’s resources.

Third, when the spawn finally got underway, a freak concurrence of wind and tide killed many thousands of crabs, potentially damaging the population and very likely ending any possibility of a really great spawn.  In other words we never saw the cobblestone road of crabs along the water’s edge, a familiar sight in the last few years.  But this year, not once.

 

The upper graph compares predicted high tides ( in blue) with the actual high tide (in Red). On the night of 26 May. This occurred during the lunar spring tide, the highest in May. Finally, a brief burst of NW wind pushed the abnormally high tide into waves breaking across the beach berm, carrying with it tens of thousands of horseshoe crabs.

In a freak concurrence of wind and tide, waves pushed horseshoe crab over the beach into the marsh by the thousands.

 

Grim results, but here’s the twist.  In good years knots leave near the 27th of May.  One day they jam the beach gobbling up eggs, the next day there gone.   In bad years they linger.  In 2003 we caught birds on June 10th.  There’s a cost to this of course,  in lower survival and failing production.  This year was an unprecedented middle ground.  By the time of departure May 27th, less than a quarter of the knots were prepared to leave. But they hung on until the 30th, blessed with a new flush of horseshoe crabs eggs create by a middling spawn and a northwesterly wind churning up the beaches and exposing deeply buried eggs. Did the birds have enough time to gain enough weight?

 

 

It’s hard to say, our last catch of just 33 knots suggests they might have, but an end-of-the-season catch makes a poor assessment.  Once birds start leaving, the ones behind could be the light birds not ready to leave, or the heavy birds waiting for better weather.   We won’t really know until the fall counts in the southbound stopovers or the winter count in Tierra del Fuego.

A season like no other

This, our 21st season of intense research and conservation on Delaware by all accounts will be like no other.  Throughout all the team of scientists and volunteers remained inspired, energetic and resourceful.  In this one month, we conducted more scientific investigations and conservation projects than most field expeditions do in an entire year. Whatever the outcome of this year’s stopover season, our team can look hopefully to the north and know that all that could be done for the birds was done.

Those of us that were paid for our time sincerely thank those who volunteered their time including the stewards that manned the closed beaches helping hundreds of people understand why closures were needed; the volunteers in the banding team who endured long hours of preparing equipment, making bands, sewing nets and keeping cages and of course counting, catching and processing birds; the volunteers who doggedly pursue opportunities to resight flagged birds to estimate numbers and yearly survival; the volunteers that provided meals every single night, a welcome relief from a hard day’s work; and finally the volunteers that went out all over the bay to save crabs lives in weather both good and bad.  We all did our best.  God help the birds and horseshoe crabs.

 

Our banding team on a catch at South Reeds.

 

 

Last Post – Abstracts from the 20 Years on Delaware Bay Workshop

 

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