Collecting Data to Understand Migrations of Pacific Red Knots

Willapa Bay and neighboring Grays Harbor are crucial spring stopover websites for Pacific Purple Knots (Calidris canutus roselaari) in the whole Pacific Flyway (Buchanan et al. 2011). A big proportion, probably all, of the worldwide inhabitants funnels by way of these two coastal Washington estuaries every spring on the way in which to breeding grounds in far northern Russia and Alaska. The subspecies numbers round 21,700 birds , making it the smallest of six Purple Knot populations worldwide, and it is on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Fast Motion Watch Listing for species of conservation concern. This previous Might, I spent a number of days in Westport with Washington Division of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) companions for the primary subject season of a brand new effort centered on answering some questions on this subspecies.

This work in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor is not new. Joe Buchanan, just lately retired from WDFW, spent many years of his profession figuring out Washington’s position within the Pacific Flyway story for this species. That long-running effort is now in Allison Anholt’s arms at WDFW. She’s main a brand new venture funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, with Jason Loghry coordinating the sector work. The objective is to deploy satellite tv for pc tags on particular person Pacific Purple Knots to fill some crucial information gaps: the place birds go between Washington and the Arctic, what the poorly understood southbound migration appears to be like like, and, more and more vital, how excessive and the place they fly. This primary 12 months is targeted on trialing seize strategies and resighting and banding birds, with tagging taking place when situations enable. The satellite tv for pc tagging work will scale up in 12 months two.

My journey centered on a day trip at Ellen Sands Island, an vital stopover web site inside Willapa Bay. Our staff of 4 took an airboat throughout the bay and cut up the work as soon as we arrived. We began with flag resights, scanning flocks for the coded leg flags that join particular person birds to seize websites throughout the flyway. Then we unfold out for a full census of each shorebird on the island. The Purple Knots – round 400 of them – have been the main focus, many already in vivid breeding plumage, fueling up for the lengthy flight forward. Blended in have been Dunlin, Western Sandpipers, Sanderlings, Black-bellied and Semipalmated Plovers, Hudsonian Whimbrels, and Ruddy Turnstones, with flocks of Brant and American White Pelicans on the water close by and Caspian Terns calling overhead.

Audubon Washington is a member of the Roselaari Working Group, which brings collectively companions from WDFW, USFWS, and plenty of others throughout the U.S., Canada, and Mexico to coordinate analysis and conservation for this subspecies throughout its full vary. The birds do not acknowledge nationwide boundaries, and neither does the science. Filling the knowledge gaps that conservation choices depend upon requires sustained partnerships on the flyway scale. Supporting the companions doing that work – by way of coordination, science, storytelling, and exhibiting up after we’re wanted – is core to what our Coasts Program is right here to do.

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