Scientist capture and tag many red knots and other shore birds to  help keep an eye on how well the birds are doing. The last decade has been challenging to these birds due to the reduction of the horseshoe crab population along the New Jersey beaches.

The preliminary results coming in seem to indicate that the horseshoe crab population is rebounding from the over harvesting and the red knots are getting enough horseshoe crab eggs to fatten up for their continued journey to their breeding grounds.

Hopefully this will bring about a rebound of the reclining population of red knots seen over the last decade and prevent the possiblility of their extinctinon.

You can see a short video of the scientists capturing the examining the shorebirds at nj.com.

horseshoe crabs coming to shore to spawn

This is the time of year when the weather gets nice and love is in the air in Delaware. At least for the horseshoe crabs.

From now until about the middle of June the Delaware bay area beaches will be covered with horseshoe crabs as they come to spawn as they have done for thousands of years.

Delaware bay area beaches have more horseshoe crabs by far then any other place on the east coast. The horseshoe crabs love Delaware’s quiet protected beaches to lay their eggs by the millions.

This is also the time of year that the horseshoe crab sensus will be taken of the horseshoe crabs to try to get an estimate of the current population of horseshoe crabs and whether conservation efforts over the last decade is helping these ancient creatures to maintain a healthy population.

If you’ve never seen this, this is something that you should experience.

Also the Horseshoe Crab/Shorebird Festival starts this Friday and runs through Sunday  on the Broadkill River at the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge  in Milton, Delaware. You can enjoy barbecue, tours of the refuge and entertainment while learning about the shore bird and horseshoe crab connection. If you want to come join the festivities you can get times and more information by visiting  www.retiretomilton.com

One of the events of the season is the annual horseshoe crab sensus that will be conducted from Maine to Florida by numorous organizations. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the restrictions that many of the states have placed on horseshoe crab harvesting has helped the horseshoe crab population to rebound from it’s population dip in the last couple of decades.