Whimbrels, sometimes in good numbers, always pass through Ohio in a
hurry in late May, when far fewer are seen on the ground than in flight.
Their quite brief passage is over now. They breed in two widely
separated areas, in the Low Arctic near Hudson Bay, and the High Arctic
in Alaska and the Northwest Territories. It's always been thought the
ones Ohioans see are headed from Central and South America to Hudson
Bay, while the Alaskan birds move up the west coast. Not necessarily so,
it's been learned.
        Scientists from The Nature Conservancy and the College of William &
Mary have been studying shorebirds in Virginia, where the densest
concentrations of whimbrels in the western hemisphere have been recorded
on the Delmarva peninsula. This is usually the birds' last stopover
before their trip to the breeding grounds, and where they gorge
themselves on fiddler crabs to fuel their journey.
        This spring a female, weighing 640 grams (40% more than the heaviest
individual reported in the literature) after some time at this staging
area, was fitted with a satellite transmitter. She subsequently took off
on a non-stop flight of no more than 146 hours, ending up 3200 miles
away at the Mackenzie River in Alaska!
        Like the better-publicized east coast stopover of red knots, a similar
tradition among whimbrels underlines the importance of a quite small
staging area and a singular food source. These birds are capable of some
prodigious feats of flight, but they must rely on a frail network of
suitable places to touch down to feed. Like the red knots that stage a
bit farther north along the Atlantic coast, these birds have showed
dramatic declines in numbers in recent decades.
Bill Whan
Columbus

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