With Joanna Burger, I am leading a team that attaches tiny devices, called geolocators, to red knots. Geolocators don’t transmit a signal but simply record one location a day for one year. They are tiny, weighing less than 1 gram. We attached over 200 geolocators on red knots all over the Western Atlantic coast, including one on a knot with a leg flag inscribed with the letters “IVL”.
The data recorded during IVL’s year-long journey from the Delaware Bay in May 2009, north to the Arctic, south to South America, and back to the Delaware Bay this year is nothing short of amazing. We will publish the flight paths of this and two other birds later this summer. I will wait until our publication to describe the entire flight of IVL, except for one part.
Partial flight path of IVL showing it northeast zigzag to avoid a storm at sea
Red knot IVL left the Delaware Bay for the Arctic in late May. It moved about the Arctic for most of the breeding period, suggesting the late winter snows prevented breeding. It then flew to Cape Cod and stayed just one day. Then IVL flew an amazing 4,500 miles over six days directly to the northern coast of Brazil. The trip should have been 3,400 miles if it weren’t for a storm at sea that forced IVL to fly, by anyone’s reckoning, into a migratory nightmare. The storm forced IVL to fly 500 miles northeast, the opposite direction from it’s wintering destination, and over 500 miles out to sea. Finally, IVL started south again flying 3,000 miles directly to the coast of Brazil just south of the Amazon River. IVL ended its flight at the eastern tip of Brazil where it spent the winter.
It took IVL several days to navigate around the storm, all the time with no hope of landing. It must have been part of a flock doing its best to reach land and trying hard not to fall behind. Perhaps it did, or more likely, others fell behind and were lost at sea.
I know something about being out at sea in a storm. My small sailboat and I have been in stormy seas along the mid-Atlantic Coast. I have several times sailed the ocean at night. Fortunately, I have never been forced to sail in stormy seas at night, but I can think of nothing scarier. Species-to-species you have to hand it to IVL for it’s endurance and courage.
My son Joseph in sailboat Eyrie
