By Sandy Bauers, Inquirer Staff Writer
POSTED: May 29, 2014
He's been called the toughest four ounces on the planet.
He's just a bird, true, but he flies about 20,000 miles a year, bucking headwinds, and dodging storms - a death-defying trip he has been making for at least 21 years.
Each time researchers spot him, identifiable by the number B95 on an orange leg band, they figure it might be their last sighting.
No bird lives forever, they tell themselves.
But Sunday on Delaware Bay, shorebird scientists spotted yet again what has to be the world's most famous shorebird: a red knot in whose honor statues have been erected and a book written.
At 8 a.m., Argentinian researcher Patricia Gonzalez went out on the deck of the house that an international shorebird team rented at Reeds Beach, Cape May County. She trained her high-magnification scope on a small flock of red knots.
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