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| Red Knots, Dunlin, Sanderling, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Short-billed Dowitcher, Laughing Gull, etc. See if you can pick out all these species. |
Thursday and Friday this week we were
woosh-netting and mist-netting at Fortescue Beach along the Delaware Bay Shore, a great spot to see the horseshoe crabs spawning and the shorebirds feeding on their fat-rich eggs. One of the main parts of my job is taking blood from the shorebirds we catch. The blood is then used to detect what the birds are feeding on. Horseshoe crab eggs have a stable isotope signal that is different from that of other prey items (e.g. polychaete worms) and is detectable in the blood. The birds at Fortescue are undoubtably feeding almost entirely on horseshoe crab eggs, and that is why we see thousands of birds there while the crabs spawn. We had a good amount of luck there those two days, catching close to 200 birds total. Here are some photos of the beautiful masses of shorebirds you can see there.
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| Red Knots, Dunlin, Sanderling, Short-billed Dowitcher, and Laughing Gull |
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| More of the same |
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| Dunlin and Semis (Semipalmated Sandpipers) coming in for a landing |
