For more images of Georgia's shorebirds, visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/wildliferesourcesdivision/sets/72157629100056649
Calidris knew: It was time to leave. On a March morning she joined others in the clouds over Tierra del Fuego. They left the southern tip of Argentina and headed north.
Their path took them over the south Atlantic. For nearly 2,000 miles they passed over waves until reaching the beaches of Brazil. There, Calidris landed, rested and ate. The next leg would be just as hard.
A few weeks later, she and others headed north again. Some winged toward Delaware Bay, where they would feed on horseshoe crabs before making a final push to nesting grounds near the Arctic Circle. Calidris veered slightly west. In late May, her flock landed at Little Tybee.
Calidris wanted to eat and rest. A dog wouldn’t let her. It bounded over a sand dune, barking. Startled, Calidris took to the air – still hungry, still tired.
For Calidris canutus, the red knot, the encounter proved fatal. Robbed of rest and nutrition, she lacked the strength to make it to breeding grounds nearly 5,000 miles away. A bird considered threatened did not reproduce.
What happened to the red knot, say biologists, occurs too often. This year, as people prepare to visit the beach, the state Department of Natural Resources is asking vacationers to remember: birds are on the beaches, too.
Give them a little room, said Tim Keyes, a DNR biologist.
“It’s sort of a constant struggle” to remind beach-goers to stay clear of birds, said Keyes. Some birds stop on the coast to lay eggs; others, like the red knot, stop long enough to feed.
From now until early July, the beaches will host American oystercatchers, Wilson’s plovers and least terns. Popular stops are Little Tybee Island, Pelican Spit (off Sea Island), Cumberland Island and the southern end of Jekyll Island. Black skimmers, royal terns and gull-billed terns also will be nesting on the strands.
Most vacationers, Keyes said, aren’t aware of the birds in the dunes, despite signs in some areas warning people to stay away from nesting spots.
Some families inadvertently set up beach umbrellas and blankets near a nest, unaware that they’re keeping birds from sitting on eggs and insulating them from the sun’s rays. A half-hour in the sun can be fatal to the embryos, he said.
Dogs are a problems, too. “It’s painful to watch people let their dogs off the leash and let them run” in areas where birds are laying eggs or feeding, he said.
Some areas are off-limits to animals, too. Since 1998, the state has limited or prohibited access to five small islands where shorebirds stop or nest. Williamson Island (which encompasses the beachfront portion of Little Tybee), St. Catherines Island Bar, Little Egg Island Bar, Pelican Spit and Satilla Marsh Island are protected.
Birds need protecting, said Lydia Thompson. A resident of St. Simon Island, Thompson is a board member and former president of the Coastal Georgia Audubon Society. For years, she's been leading bird-watching tours around the coast. She also recently started Operation Plover Patrol, keeping watch on plover grounds on a segment of Jekyll Island.
At present, she said, five plover chicks – “they’ve got fat little bodies” – are living on the shore. Each has a long bill. “They look like they’re smoking a cigar.”
Like Keyes, she understands that not only humans like the beach. The plover wants to start a family.
“Now,” she said, “is the time for them to actually produce young.”
Or, as Calidris knows, it’s a place to stop and recharge. Birds, like humans, need beach time.
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