Shrinking bird pays the bill for Arctic warming

By Helen Briggs

BBC News

A migratory bird has shrunk in stature as temperatures warm at its Arctic breeding ground, according to research.

As a consequence of climate change, the red knot may have a lower survival chance on a different continent, say scientists.

The shore bird breeds in the Arctic in the summer and flies to tropical habitats in winter.

Scientists believe shrinkage in body size is a response to climate change in different animals.

The latest research, published in the journal, Science, looked at the red knot (Calidris canutus).

The wading bird is one of the record-breakers for long distance flight, being able to cover about 5,000 km without stopping.

An international team studied the bird over 30 years at its stop-off point in Russia.

"We see a change in body size and also a change in body shape," said lead researcher Dr Jan van Gils of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and Utrecht University.

He told the BBC's Science in Action programme: "What is peculiar about this is that we have strong evidence that this is an effect of climate change and people have seen in other species changes in body size in response to climate change."

The study was the first to show that shrinking in response to climate change was a disadvantage to an animal, because the smaller birds had a lower survival rate, he added.

Paying the bill

The scientists found that over the course of 30 years, the date of the snow melt in the Arctic had advanced by more than two weeks.

Meanwhile, the birds produced smaller and smaller offspring - probably because the chicks missed the main food supply at the time of the thaw.

Continued ...

Migrating red knot first bird declared threatened by climate change

BY JENNY STALETOVICH

A flame-crested shorebird that makes one of the longest migrations on the planet has become the first bird declared threatened by the effects of climate change, federal wildlife officials said Tuesday.

The rufa red knot, which travels about 18,000 miles every year from wintering grounds in Tierra del Fuego to Canada, joins the polar bear as another species suffering from shrinking habitat and food supplies caused by rising sea levels and climbing temperatures, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe. The red knot’s range covers 27 countries and 40 states including Florida, along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

“The listing today sends a clear message about the threat that species like the red knot are facing from the effects of a changing global climate system,” Ashe said. U.S. wildlife officials will now map a critical habitat for the bird, which migrates across 40 states including Florida, along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

Species that inhabit the planet’s extreme environments face more dire threats as coastlines shift and climate change interrupts food chains and expose species’ dependency on one another. To make its long flight, the red knot needs to gorge on horseshoe crab eggs so the bird times its flights and resting spots to coincide with the annual inland migration crabs make along the east coast of the United States to mate.

Continued ...

Shifts In Habitat May Threaten Ruddy Shorebird’s Survival

Guided by biologists, volunteers briefly catch, band and release some of Delaware’s visiting red knots each spring to monitor the health of the species.

Maggie Starbard/NPR

An intrepid bird called the red knot migrates from the southern tip of South America to the Arctic and back every year. But changes in climate along its route are putting this ultramarathoner at risk.

The federal government has proposed to list the red knot as threatened on the endangered species list, because of the risk of extinction the bird faces over its 9,300-mile journey, largely because of climate change.

“You know, this bird is facing any conceivable difficulty from Terra del Fuego [Argentina] all the way to the Arctic,” says Kevin Kalasz, a biologist who manages the shorebird project for the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife. Kalasz has studied red knots for more than a decade.

Kevin Kalasz, a biologist with the shorebird project, on the lookout for red knots amid the gulls and other birds.

Maggie Starbard/NPR

Read on

Globe-spanning bird B95 is back for another year

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.

read more

Horseshoe Crab Harvests Driving Red Knot 'Moonbirds' to Extinction (Op-Ed)

Elly Pepper is a legislative advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). This Op-Ed is adapted from a post on the NRDC blog Switchboard. Pepper contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Boom! At the sound of the cannon, we rose frantically from our hiding places and started sprinting toward the water's edge where we had set our net hours before. Just days ago, I had arrived in Canada's Mingan Archipelago National Park to collect information on red knots — a shorebird that boasts spectacular cinnamon-colored plumage during breeding season. As I approached the bird-netting mayhem, I realized I would finally get my chance to see these little flying machines up close.

Referred to poetically as "moonbirds" because some of them fly the equivalent of a trip to the moon and back during their lifetime, these birds are some tough cookies. Each year, they travel approximately 18,000 miles on their 20-inch wingspan — from South America's southern tip to their Arctic breeding grounds in the spring, and then back in the fall — one of the longest migrations of any animal.

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The crab and the bird: lifting moratorium on horseshoe crabs could affect migratory red knot

A small bird makes an epic flight from Antarctic to Arctic, nearly pole-to-pole, every year.

Along the way, the red knot makes a migratory pit stop in the Delaware Bay, where it eats thousands of eggs from a creature that couldn’t be more different from it: the ancient, helmeted horseshoe crab.

For nearly eight years, the state has protected the horseshoe crabs from fishermen in the hope it would boost the bird’s dwindling numbers worldwide. But that could soon change.

A moratorium protecting horseshoe crabs along New Jersey’s shoreline could soon be lifted, as proposed in a state Assembly bill that’s before a committee today in Trenton.

Environmentalists say lifting the moratorium would up-end a delicate balance in the food chain that’s just beginning to stabilize, after years of over-fishing. The seafood industry says allowing collection of the crabs again would give certain parts of the fishing industry a desperately needed source of bait.

The ongoing ban would end with passage of the bill sponsored by Assemblyman Nelson Albano (D - Atlantic, Cape May and Cumberland). The measure is before the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee this afternoon.

Continued:  http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/01/the_crab_and_the_bird_moratori.html