The Flight of the Red Knot: A Natural History Account of a Small Bird's Annual Migration from the Arctic Circle to the Tip of South America and Back

The epic subtitle only hints at the amazing scope of this story. The subject is the migration of a species of sandpiper, known as the red knot for its smoked salmon breeding coloration. These birds mass in the tens of thousands on New Jersey's Delaware Bay beaches in late May, a pit stop between Brazil and Hudson Bay, one leg of their immense journey. Their short New Jersey sojourn indicates both the wonder of their stamina and the fragility of the whole elaborately evolved enterprise, for they use this stop to consume a prodigious number--as many as 135,000--of tiny horseshoe crab eggs. Yet this bit of New Jersey shore is a vital link that makes the completion of the trip possible. An astonishing and important story.