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 - Hardcover

Harrington, Brian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393038610 ISBN 13: 9780393038613

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996

Synopsis

A beautifully illustrated book following the extraordinary 18,000-mile annual migration of the Red Knot.

Red Knots are in the sandpiper family. They are barely ten inches long and weigh about twenty ounces. Each spring they breed in the Arctic, but in the year that follows they will migrate to the southern tip of South America and back again in their quest for food. Why and how they travel more than 18,000 miles each year, often as many as 2,500 miles nonstop (and at speeds averaging between thirty and forty miles per hour), is the subject of this engrossing and beautifully illustrated book.

Based on a popular NOVA series on migration, The Flight of the Red Knot is the story of an ornithological marvel by one of the world's foremost authorities. Here we learn of the marvelous physical equipment of the long-distance flyers, their extraordinary food storage capacity, and the nature of their ever-moving food supply. The methods of research into the Red Knots' life cycle are also described. Bird lovers especially, but also any one interested in nature will love this book.
Four-color photos

About this title

Review:

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.

About the Author:

Brian Harrington is an ornithologist associated with the Manomet Bird Observatory in Massachusetts.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0393038610
• ISBN 13: 9780393038613
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192