The flight of the red knot

The flight of the red knot is one of the most spectacular long-distance migrations in the world. A member of the sandpiper family, the red knot is barely ten inches long and weighs about twenty ounces. Each year, these small russet-colored birds breed in the Arctic, then migrate to the 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 much as 2500 miles nonstop (and at speeds averaging between thirty and forty miles per hour), is the subject of this captivating and beautifully illustrated book. Aided by hundreds of volunteers along a vast flight path, author Brian Harrington has been tracking shorebirds like the red knot since 1972 to determine whether conservation measures are needed to protect their rich stopover sites. His findings are surprisingly simple, and shocking: of the many sites where birds stop to feed in their journeys north and south, a handful are crucial to the survival of ninety percent of the birds. If these sites disappear, the birds and many other creatures will also disappear. Derived from the popular NOVA film "Mystery of the Animal Pathfinders," which was based in part on Harrington's fourteen-year field study, The Flight of the Red Knot describes in detail the remarkable physical characteristics of these long-distance fliers, their astounding food-storage capacity, and the ever-moving nature of their food supply, as well as the methods of research used to chart the red knot's life cycle.