Mike’s Photo Blog: The Quest for the Red Knot (an epic saga).

I've had it all planned out for months, the Quest for the Red Knot that is. I/we have tried for at least 3 years and failed miserably to see these lovely shorebirds. In the Delaware Bay around the full moon in May at High Tide the Horseshoe Crabs come ashore to lay their eggs. The Red Knot time their arrival in the Delaware Bay to coincide with the Horseshoe Crab spawning which is their final stopover on their Northward migration from as far away as Tierra del Fuego at the very bottom of South America. Brian and I left PA way before the first Sparrow fart at 2:45AM heading South to Delaware’s Slaughter Beach and Mispillion Inlet at the DuPont Nature Centre. The weather forecast was not great when I had looked everyday leading up to our visit which was timed to arrive at low tide which was just before 6AM. What I had not anticipated was the thick fog advisory in the forecast at 2:15AM when I woke. It wasn't too bad and didn’t affect the 3 hour drive down. Slaughter Beach has many beach access point and we stopped at several of them and while we saw lots of shorebirds Red Knot were not amongst them. While walking along the beach we flipped over as many Horseshoe Crabs that we could and it was heartening to see them making tracks in the sand back towards the incoming tide.

At one point it started raining so we headed up to the nearby DuPont Nature Centre as we knew they had a partially covered deck where we could shelter and continue on the quest. The drive to the Centre alongside the Cedar Creek was heaving with Short-billed Dowitcher, Ruddy Turnstones, and a variety of Sandpipers. The light was not great in the flat lighting due to the cloud cover and fog but it was what it was. No Red Knot unfortunately. When the short lived shower stopped we headed back down to Slaughter Beach as far as we could go but again no Red Knot. Back to the DuPont Nature Centre which opened at 9AM for another scan for the elusive Red Knot. The lovely young ladies in the Nature Centre came to the rescue by finding a couple of birds for us. OK, it was not exactly what we expected as our first glimpse of the birds was via a remote controlled camera on the breakwater beach about 1/4 of a mile away! We knew they were there though and Brian scanning through the shorebirds soon found more so he was a happy bunny. Many thanks to the young ladies at the DuPont Nature Centre 👍

Leaving there we headed North to Port Mahon where we saw a lots of Cormorants, Gulls and a few assorted Shorebirds and noisy Ospreys.

Next stop on our return journey was at Bombay Hook where the little midges were the proverbial pain in the ass. When the sun did briefly break through the cloud cover out came the flies so we hurried back to the car. Next stop was at Woodland Beach which was nice but apart from a few Grackles and Red-winged Blackbird pretty fruitless. From there home, after an uneventful drive we got there after a 14 hour day and I was eager to see what my several thousand photos were like.