Coastal Virginia a Key Staging Area for Migratory Shorebirds

Coastal areas provide key areas for stopover and feeding of migratory shorebirds. Among them is the red knot, which migrates from wintering areas at the tip of South America to breeding areas in Arctic Canada. Active feeding during its stopover on the east coast is critical to completing its migration. It has long been known that many red knots stop over at the Delaware Bay to feed primarily on horseshoe crab eggs. The rufa population of red knots has declined substantially in the past two decades. One possible explanation is that declining availability of horseshoe crab eggs in the Delaware Bay drives the decline of red knots. Researchers Jim Fraser and Sarah Karpanty of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Sciences are conducting field observations of the migration and feeding of red knots in the coastal marshes of Delaware Bay and along the barrier islands on the coast of Virginia.  They did not observe any red knots radio-tagged in Virginia move to Delaware Bay despite daily aerial telemetry flights from the coast of Virginia up to and around Delaware Bay, suggesting that coastal Virginia is an independent stopover site for red knots.  In Virginia, red knots foraged primarily on Coquina clam andblue mussel spat. 

For more information, contact Jim Fraser (540-231-6064, fraser@vt.edu) or Sarah Karpanty (540-231-4586, karpanty@vt.edu).

9/23/08