Great article, thanks a lot for sharing! I once saw a show of Arthur Ganson's (the engineer turned artist featured in the beginning of the article), if you ever have the chance try to check out some of his work, it's absolutely fascinating and unlike anything else.
The article is interesting, but doesn't really answer the first question he posed -- why do birds migrate and is it "hard wired"? The use of the red knot as an example is a food driven problem which is being addressed by some of the actions of NJ and Del (and MD). The red knot is still migrating, but the numbers are down because of their inability to make the complete migration or inability to breed once they arrive at the breeding ground. If you wonder about the "hard wiring" push to migrate or the loss of that urge, maybe he should be studying the Canada goose which has stopped migrating in so many areas.
By the way, there are now volunteers that comb the beaches of Delaware after high tide, putting the horseshoe crabs that got stranded as the tide receded back into the ocean, hoping that they will breed another day. There's lots of work going into the effort to save the red knot now that the threat has been recognized.
A very nice article which corroborates the fact which is already proven several times. But the question here is how many of us so called 'Bird Lovers' or 'Nature Lovers' will now consciously make a decision to stop eating birds food (I mean Fish, Oyesters and Crab here) or atleast would reduce these in their daily diet.
Migration blues
Originally Posted by Sidharth Kodikal
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