The next meeting of the Nasketucket Bird Club will be on Thursday, October 25at 7:00 pm at the Mattapoisett Public Library. Alan Kneidel, biologist at Manomet, will present “Migratory Ecology of Whimbrels on Cape Cod and Beyond.”
Many shorebird populations are declining. To understand what threats are impacting survival, Manomet is conducting research to uncover habitat needs and migratory pathways of large shorebirds called Whimbrels.
Whimbrels breed on the tundra of Arctic and sub-Arctic North America and some migrate to the saltmarshes and beaches of Cape Cod, Massachusetts from July to October. While on the Cape, they feast on fiddler crabs by day and roost on barrier sand-spits at night.
In doing so, Whimbrels stockpile the energy reserves needed to fuel their subsequent non-stop flight to their coastal wintering grounds in the Caribbean and South America. Since 2015, Manomet staff has deployed five lightweight (5 g) satellite transmitters on juvenile Whimbrels in the marshes of Cape Cod during the first southbound migration of their lives.
These transmitters can relay specific location data for several years and allow us to answer specific questions such as: the timing and patterns of migration, identification of feeding and roosting locations at migratory stopover sites, location of nesting sites and wintering sites, and identification of threats the birds may encounter.
While our work has begun to reveal the migration secrets we seek, we plan to expand the scope of the project in the coming years so as to fully understand the resource needs of these birds. This study is the first to track Whimbrels during their first year of life. The results of this work will be directly applicable to shorebird conservation efforts throughout the Americas.
Alan Kneidel’s love for birds has been a driving force in his life for as long as he can remember. Growing up in North Carolina in a home of travel hungry ecologists, he has embraced that influence and devoted his adult life to bird conservation and research. Sandwiched between earning his B.A. in Biology from UNC Chapel-Hill in 2008 and his M.S. in Natural Resources from Delaware State University in 2016, Alan spent several years traveling throughout the Americas to work on bird-related research projects. His current work for Manomet centers around shorebird demographics research on the North Slope of Alaska and the use of satellite transmitters to reveal the migratory patterns of Whimbrel on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. If you were to ask him, Alan is most at home out in the elements, whether it’s wading through chest deep mud or walking face first into a raging blizzard.
The Mattapoisett Free Public Library is located at 7 Barstow Street and is handicapped accessible. The program is free and open to the public.
Find out more about the club and upcoming bird walks at https://massbird.org/Nasketucket/