Why are Red Knots Knot Red?

This morning I was taking Maverick (my dog of dogs) for his morning walk on the beach when we discovered this Red Knot stalking up and down in the surf line methodically stooping and picking up small crustaceans and mollusks. From the picture you can see that this sandpiper is large and sturdy like a Robin with relatively short legs and a short-ish bill. Conspicuously absent was the rich salmon color that lights up the head and breast of this bird during the breeding season (I have only seen it a handful of times), and derives its namesake. Strangely enough, this bird was apart from its usual compatriots, Black-bellied Plovers and Ruddy Turnstones. I wouldn't even have seen it had it not been for Maverick scaring the bejeezus out of it (Dogzilla of the Atlantic Coastline). We will have to be more careful not to flush these birds while they are resting and feeding, I'm sure that they have enough problems with the thousands of yokels who visit here each week.


One of the things that I find most intriguing and unbelievable about the Knot is the lengths that it must go to each year to find breeding and wintering habitat. As you can see from the range map at the left, the six subspecies of Knot travel a variety of distances, with one common factor... they fly a LONG way.

They do this by staging in vast numbers in certain spots on their migration routes and then they all lift off together, traveling thousands of miles in a single flight. One such flight, an 80+ hour 2,500 mile non-stopper from the Eastern tip of Brazil to Delaware Bay, in the northeast, is just one of these amazing journeys'. So important is the Delaware Bay to the Atlantic flyway that an estimated 90 percent of the entire population of the Red Knot subspecies C. c. rufa may be found on the bay in a single day.

All this from a bird that weighs less than a cup of coffee.

Sadly, the Red Knot is know facing new survival challenges that 20 years ago were not a factor. This pair of socks size bird, and millions of other shorebirds choose Delaware Bay as a stopover on their long migrations due to the rich seasonal bounty of horseshoe crab eggs. As the crabs infiltrate the shallow waters once a year they lay eggs that number in the tens of billions. Shorebirds then gorge themselves before continuing on to breeding grounds near the Arctic circle.

But in the mid 1990's, there was a substantial increase in the harvest of Horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay. Asian eel markets had skyrocketed and the few commercial eel fishermen who fished using whole horseshoe crabs were making a killing, scooping up the crabs by the hundreds as they gathered in the shallows of Delaware Bay to spawn and lay their eggs. This over consumption led to a moratorium on the collection of horseshoe crabs in both New Jersey and Delaware after the population crashed to 40,000 Knots in 2004. There are positives however, and the increased pressure of citizens and their governments may lead to the protection of vital habitats and food sources for these incredible birds. And, I kinda like them too.

One last neat thought: A red knot banded in May 1987 was seen on Delaware Bay in May 2000. During those 13 years, the bird had flown about 242,350 miles, a distance farther than from the earth to the moon.