Conserve Wildlife Blog

Posts Tagged ‘migratory shorebirds’

Red knot decline confirmed by CWF research highlighted in NY Times

Friday, June 12th, 2020
Photo by Hans Hillewaert

Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s research with scientist Dr. Larry Niles was highlighted in today’s New York Times feature detailing the 80 percent decline in red knots in New Jersey’s Delaware Bay this spring.


by Jon Hurdle, The New York Times

A sudden drop in the number of red knots visiting the beaches of Delaware Bay during migration this spring has renewed concern among scientists about the survival of the threatened shore bird’s Atlantic Coast population.

According to biologists, the number of knots that stayed to feed at the bay in May declined by about 80 percent from the same time last year. The Delaware Bay is one of the world’s most important sites for shorebird migration.

Continue reading at nytimes.com.

Close to the Finish Line

Saturday, May 30th, 2020

by: Dr. Larry Niles of Wildlife Restoration Partnerships. Dr. Niles is working in Delaware Bay on behalf of Conserve Wildlife Foundation. He has helped lead the efforts to protect at-risk shorebirds and horseshoe crabs for over two decades.

Read part one of this update on the 2020 Delaware Bay migration stop over, “Ecological Lockdown for Horseshoe Crabs”.

Direct Flight to the Arctic or Stopover?

A migratory stopover for arctic nesting shorebirds must provide each bird the energy necessary to get to the next stopover or to the ultimate destination, the wintering or breeding area. Delaware Bay stands out among these shorebird refueling stops because it delivers fuel in the form of horseshoe crab eggs giving birds options. Our telemetry has shown that Red knots, the species we best understand, may leave Delaware Bay and go directly to their Arctic breeding areas, or stopover on Hudson Bay. The choice of going straight to the breeding area or stop at another stopover may be critical to understanding the ecological dramas now underway on Delaware Bay.

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New Podcast Episode: The Red Knot’s Journey

Sunday, January 5th, 2020

Conserve Wildlife Foundation is excited to release The Red Knot’s Journey, the second episode of ‘State of Change’, our podcast exploring how climate change is affecting wildlife in New Jersey.

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Mapping red knots in the Arctic

Friday, August 3rd, 2018

A new study investigates the habitat preferences of endangered Red Knots in their vast, remote Arctic breeding range. Credit: M. Peck for Phys.org

by The American Ornithological Society, via Phys.org

Rutgers University’s Richard Lathrop, Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey’s Larry Niles, and their colleagues attached radio tags to 365 knots captured while migrating through Delaware Bay in 1999-2006. To learn where and in what sort of habitat the tagged birds nested, they then conducted surveys via small airplane across the south and central Canadian Arctic, a vast study area spanning from Victoria Island in the west to Baffin Island in the east.

The study shows that there are more than 74,000 square kilometers of suitable rufa Red Knot habitat across their Central Arctic breeding range—enough space for at least that many breeding pairs, assuming one square kilometer of territory per nest.

Click here to read more.

Birds in better condition than last year but still face an ecological roulette

Wednesday, July 11th, 2018

by Larry Niles (Part 3 of 3)

With the stopover period winding down, we can say the red knot and other shorebird species left the bay in better condition than the disastrous condition of last year. So what does it mean?

First, the last four years have been a sort of ecological roulette for the birds. Horseshoe crab numbers remained at only 1/3 the potential population possible on Delaware Bay leaving birds at the mercy of good conditions to get enough eggs. Last year, water temperatures stayed low during the mid-May depressing the spawn and the density of eggs. Although the average was 8000-eggs/square meter, there were less than 2000 eggs/ meters square in the month of May. (more…)