----- Original Message -----
From: Jason Guerard<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 11:14 AM
Subject: Re: [BRDBRAIN] Banded Shorebirds and Red Knot requests
Hello all,
Just a quick note in reply to Jeff's post about Red knots. I have had the pleasure of working with and for Brian Harrington in years past at the Audubon Camp in Maine and conducting knot band re-sighting along the Gulf Coast in the winter of 2000 ( I think, may have been 01.) Anyway I walked a large amount of coastline from Marco Island in the south to Ft. D and Three Rooker. By far the Tampa Bay area coast had the largest numbers of knots (primarily Ft.D, Honeymoon Island and Shell Key, possibly Egmont though I never made it out there.) Thus this seems to be vital habitat for this species and I hate to hear that the knots were nowhere to be found last winter.
Just to give a little background "as I understand it" (in another words don't quote me on this as I have not been in touch with this issue for a while.) The knots that winter along the Gulf Coast are not the "rufa" subspecies (which winter in South America) that is in peril but the Alaska nesting "canutus". The thought was, at the time at least, that these birds migrate from Alaska to the coast of Georgia where Manomet has a huge banding effort. From there they head to good ole Florida to spend the winter. This what I was doing years ago, looking for banded birds in the hopes of finding ones that had been banded in Georgia.
I won't go into the banding info as there is tons of info on the net and Jeff did a great job of explaining things. I will say though, if you see a banded shorebird with a colored flag band, this indicates the country in which the bird was banded. The USA is a green flag, I believe that Argentina is blue and Brazil is Orange, Canada is yellow and so on. Though I am probably not remembering the country colors correctly. Suffice to say that if you see any other color flag than green make sure that you take note as the find could be extra significant, though all sightings reported are significant.
As Jeff says, Brian Harrington is a great guy and is more than willing to help anyone out in submitting a band sighting. After all a lot of the info we have on shorebirds through banding is because of the everyday citizen scientist. If anyone is interested to learn more about the Red knot, Brian's book (The Flight of the Red Knot) is excellent.
I suppose I have spouted on long enough. Congrats to you Jeff on the godwit find, would have loved to have seen that one. Hope you all have a great day.
Jason Guerard
Chestertown, MD
originally: Tampa, Fla
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