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What is a Shorebird?

Shorebirds are a diverse group of birds that includes sandpipers, plovers, stilts, snipes, oystercatchers and jacanas. There are more than 210 species worldwide. Over 50 species can be found in North America.

Each spring thousands of shorebirds race northward from wintering grounds, as far south as the southern tip of South America, to breeding grounds in northern North America. The Arctic summer is brief and the birds need to get there at just the right time to be able to find a mate, lay and incubate eggs and hatch young. Once the young hatch they have to learn to find food and eat enough to start their southward migration by late July and August.

Stopping sites or staging areas offer an abundant, reliable food source. In the Delaware Bay horseshoe crab eggs provide the high energy food source that fuels the last stage of the shorebirds flight to the Arctic.

Shorebirds arrive on the beaches of Delaware Bay thin and hungry. Each bird spends as much as two weeks eating and gaining weight. In the course of two weeks of gorging on horseshoe crab eggs a Red Knot can nearly double its weight. Can you imagine eating enough in two weeks to go from 100 to 200 pounds?