May 17
Good Morning
Connor and I took a trip to Brooks this weekend to photograph shorebirds. We have found a nice little beach where you can lay down and get some very nice images. And maybe a little wet. Connor went through two pair of pants before deciding to put on his rain pants.
The highlight of the day is the Red Knot. Here are a couple of extracts from the All about Birds Website
Red Knots are plump, neatly proportioned sandpipers that in summer sport brilliant terracotta-orange underparts and intricate gold, buff, rufous, and black upperparts. This cosmopolitan species occurs on all continents except Antarctica and migrates exceptionally long distances, from High Arctic nesting areas to wintering spots in southern South America, Africa, and Australia. Red Knots from eastern North America have declined sharply in recent decades owing in part to unsustainable harvest of horseshoe crab eggs, and they have become a flagship species for shorebird conservation in the twenty-first century.
Red Knots concentrate in huge numbers at traditional stopover points during migration. Delaware Bay is one important area during spring migration, where the knots feed on the eggs of spawning horseshoe crabs. Nearly 90% of the entire population of the Red Knot subspecies rufa can be present on the bay in a single day. The reduction in food available to the knots because of the heavy harvesting of horseshoe crabs is in part responsible for a sharp decline in Red Knot populations.
So to find them in the prairies is quite rare. To have a great place to photograph them is even rarer. The only place the regularly occur in Alberta is near Brooks for about a week in May.
Bonus was a Great Horned Owl nest located right beside the road.
Stay Well
