Red Knots flying along Delaware Bay, New Jersey, USA. What follows is the map of the red knot with leg flag TVV but she was accompanied by a flock of compatriots. Photo by Jan Van der Kam from Life on Delaware Bay
1.
I sit in a Boeing 777, about to fly nonstop from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Newark, NJ, staring at the video presentation of the plane’s flight path on the back of the seat in front of me. The screen shows a slow animation of my plane leaving Sao Paulo, crossing the Amazon and the Atlantic to land at Newark Airport. The plane flies at 35,000 feet and 558 mph, covering 4780 miles in 9 hours.
At the scale of the map on the small screen, you could have imagined it to be the course taken by red knots migrating from Lagoa do Peixe, Brazil, to Delaware Bay, NJ, a flight we documented many times with our tracking devices. But the difference between a bird and a plane couldn’t be greater.
While my plane makes a relatively quick hop to NJ in less than half a day, a red knot must fly nonstop for up to six days, regardless of wind or weather. Imagine pumping wing for a whole week, day and night, nonstop. In a strong tailwind, she will make up to 60 mph per hour but almost nothing when fighting a headwind. Her altitude could be as high as 10,000 feet or just above the ocean swell because she constantly tests the wind to avoid a headwind and find a following wind. When my airplane hits a rough patch, I buckle up and continue my leisure while the bird faces the elements without any warning and with little recourse except to muscle into it. My pilot uses advanced electronics to track the location and direction of the destination. Our bird must fly without landmarks and in total darkness but guided by a map imprinted in her brain, a sense of direction taken from the stars, and a mysterious magnetic sense that arises in the brain’s biochemistry. Together these organic tracking systems can guide the bird to the exact nest depression in her Canadian Arctic tundra home after flying 10,000 miles from her wintering area in Tierra del Fuego.
The flight path of my Boeing 777 from Sao Luis to Newark NJ. This flight mirrors the flight of the red knot with leg flag TVV
Our pilot knows the plane’s fuel consumption and carries a big buffer just in case. Our bird must build fat as fuel, only guessing what she will encounter on the way. She may sail right through to her destination in fine fiddle. Or she might face unexpectedly hostile winds, sometimes terrible wind from a tropical storm, and become so exhausted she falls into the sea and drowns without any notice. Or, more likely, she will barely make landfall losing all her stored fat and up to 30% of her muscle mass. As I stare into the black void outside my airplane window during my comfortable ride to roughly the same destination, I wonder what it would be like to be our bird flying in the lonely darkness, bravely struggling to make landfall and never really knowing what lies ahead. Will she reach Delaware Bay and feast on abundant eggs, or will the weather and distance prove too much?
All this goes through my mind while returning from 10 days of fieldwork in Lagoa do Piexe Brazil, a national park in southern Brazil and one of the most important stopovers for red knots on the Atlantic Flyway. After 10 days of grueling work on a wild beach, we captured and tagged 13 red knots with state-of-the-art satellite tracking devices. They continuously track the bird’s movement so we can better imagine its arduous flight and have exact data to describe it objectively. On returning to our work in Delaware Bay, Antonio Brum, a Ph.D. student from the lab of Professor Virginia Petry of Unisinos University, will continue the study as part of his doctoral thesis investigation.
A sunbird transmitter on a red knot. The tiny solar panel powers the satelite transmitter longer than its attachment to the bird which depends on the method. Photo by Antonio Brum
I aimed at two goals during our ten days in the field together. First, to figure out how to catch birds in the unique conditions of Lagoa do Piexe, where as little as 200 birds spread out over 80 km of the wild beach while an offshore cyclone pumped up rogue waves that regularly pounded the beach, our net, and cannons. Catching birds under these conditions meant developing new methods unique to this place. We couldn’t rely on the experience of the other researchers who conducted similar work in LDP. Brian Harrington in 1981 and Clive Minton in 1996 faced the unique conditions of LDP, but when the stopover population numbered over 20,000 knots. Our maximum count was 200 birds during our stay, but we saw only 50 on most days. Catching any knots would be a challenge.
Our second goal was to ensure Antonio and his team could continue the surveillance of shorebirds in LDP, as Knots arrive here in early May to build weight before moving on to North America. The amount of weight gained staggers the imagination. A knot can arrive in LDP at 122 grams and leave at over 240. If I gained that much weight during my stay in LDP, I would go from 178 pounds to 348 pounds. And still, be able to fly!
Antonio Brum preparing a cannon to trap red knots on Lagoa Do Piexe, Brazil
Our two goals represent a significant reimagining of our roles. We dismissed the usual North American way of experts going to South America to conduct the work and then provided our South American colleagues with data that would ultimately find its way into papers in North American scientific journals. Instead, we went to South America to teach the skills of catching shorebirds, attaching satellite tags, and monitoring the numbers of birds using advanced statistics. In all other science skills, the Unisinos team exceeds most US graduate students, so the project would be in expert hands. To make this a sure thing, we raised funds necessary for the Unisinos team to conduct a yearly project allied with our own in Delaware Bay.
What follows is the story of our fieldwork and our ultimate success, not only attaching transmitters but teaching Brazilians the same skill taught to us by others from around the world, Clive Minton chief upon them. The old saying captured his motto give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.
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