Red Knots Refuel in the Delaware Bay

BirdNote^®
Red Knots Refuel in the Delaware Bay
Written by Lucina Melesio

This is BirdNote.

          [Shore sounds; Red knot flight call]

The Red Knot is a chunky shorebird no bigger than a robin with one of the longest migrations in the animal kingdom. Every year, some of these birds travel around 9,000 miles from the Arctic tundra to Tierra del Fuego in South America.

          [Red Knot call] 

This epic journey depends on a critical stopover site: the Delaware Bay. Here, hungry Red Knots arrive in droves each spring, timing their visit perfectly to the spawning of horseshoe crabs. The crabs’ tiny, greenish eggs are an energy-packed meal, just what the birds need to refuel for the next leg of their journey.

          [Red Knot calls]

But after decades of overharvesting for bait and medical use, horseshoe crab numbers plummeted by nearly 80%. 03:04 That has meant fewer eggs for the exhausted Red Knots.

          [Red Knot distress calls]

But there’s hope. In 2013, fisheries managers in the U.S. banned the harvest of female horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay to take pressure off the crabs – and the birds who rely on them. And in 2025, those protections were renewed; 06:08 Horseshoe crabs in the Delaware region are at an all-time high since 2003, and Red Knot populations across the Americas has been low but stable since 2011.

          [Red Knot calls] 

Protecting key stopover sites and managing fisheries sustainably are just some of the ways we can help migratory birds like the Red Knot complete their cross-continent marathon each spring.

For BirdNote, I’m Lucina Melesio.

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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Soundscape ML102292 recorded by Charles Duncan. Red Knot ML31731521 recorded by Andrew Spencer. Red Knot ML207731 recorded by Bob McGuire. Red Knot ML176410 recorded by Lucas DeCicco. Red Knot ML207732 recorded by Bob McGuire.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2025 BirdNote November 2025
Narrator: Lucina Melesio

ID# REKN-03-2025-11-11        REKN-03

References:
https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/rufa-red-knot-horseshoe-crab/ 
https://whsrn.org/results-of-the-2020-aerial-survey-of-rufa-red-knot-in-tierra-del-fuego/