Here is an update on where we stand right now.  By the way, the new name for our shorebird project within GCA is The Red Knot Survival Project.

I was just reading about non-profits and who gives to them, who the supporters are.  Well it turns out that 75% of the money donated comes from private individuals.  That is pretty astounding, and also encouraging.  As of this writing, Global Conservation Alliance has received money donations from various individuals, from one corporate contributor and from one conservation organization donor.

GCA members have traveled to Delaware Bay to work there the last two years, in 2008 and 2009; and we anticipate going back this year.  Our target dates are May 22 until June 1st.  The full moon, when horseshoe crabs gather in the most dense numbers to lay their eggs, because the higher tides of the full and new moons take them further up the beach, occurs on the 27th of May this year, right in the middle of our stay.  Also, it happens that the historical departure date for Red Knots leaving en masse for the Arctic occurs on some afternoon between the 27th and the 29th of May.

Back to the money.  This is the first year that it was clear to the GCA founders that we cannot go to the Cape May beaches without soliciting and getting significant outside financial support.  The days of financing our work out-of-pocket – that’s three people paying their own way to get to southern New Jersey, rent space to live while there, eat, do the work and basically ignore their obligations back home – are gone.  That approach is no longer practical.  It is not just a function of the overall economy.  It is a consideration of the expanded scope of our projects.  If we are to move forward with our mission to pro-actively and measurably improve the status of the Red Knot and other migrating shorebirds, we need to spend another season conducting studies designed to quantify how our innovative methods can actually result in improved departure weights for the birds.

Personal aside:  As someone who is more of a naturalist by context than by formal education, whose appreciation of natural phenomena is mostly experiential via birding and avian photography, as opposed to scientific training in biology and ecology, my patience is challenged by the notion pervasive in the scientific culture that one has to prove the obvious to earn the credibility that allows one to progress to the point of applying real solutions to a problem.  In this case the “problem” is that rufa Red Knots are losing ground to possible extinction.  My two colleagues in GCA are more attuned to the scientific method and the bureaucratic demands required of those who want to participate; and they balance my urge “to get on with it”.  This is a roundabout way of saying that, however much I would like to leap directly into implementation, GCA has another season of research to complete before we can supplement the shorebirds’ natural food stocks (horseshoe crab eggs) at a scale sufficient to make a measurable difference.

Back to the money, again.  Here is our very modest financial situation.  Thanks to the generous efforts of two individuals, GCA is able to pay for submission and accounting fees associated with applying for tax-exempt status.  We have money left over, just, to commit to a house rental in Cape May Courthouse to house the crew for ten days this May.  Beyond covering those inescapable expenses, GCA needs to raise funding to underwrite the 2010 projects.  Funding implies which projects can be designed and accomplished; and the projects imply the funding.  Thus funding and project design are inter-dependent.  Applications for permits to work on the beaches are also dependent on funding and project design, and vice-versa.

GCA has developed two budget goals, both practical and both doable. The first budget provides the absolute bare minimum for being on site for ten days and carrying out a project to measure how much more volume of horseshoe crab eggs is consumed by shorebirds when the beaches are plowed to expose more eggs.  We are also actively looking for other research studies to run in tandem with ours to help assess how increased egg exposure and egg predation by the shorebirds may result in weight gain (grams of fat)  for the birds.  This budget comes in at $9,685.

The second budget is for a longer stay, to bracket both the new and the full moon dates, and provides for broader testing and the completion of  a second project, which involves supplying an alternative food source to distract Laughing Gulls competing with shorebirds for the horseshoe crab eggs.  This budget also includes money for administrative costs, for the first time in three years.  This budget, the one we really hope to reach, is for $44,300.  Details of both budgets can be had for the asking.

I have read that if there is a ratio of more than 50% of an organization’s funds going to administrative costs, that is too high.  And also that, according to the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance (at www.give.org), they suggest that no more than 35% of funds be put back into fund-raising.  For the record, GCA has dedicated zero per cent (0%) of funds received into fund-raising or administrative costs.  This has a nice, clean ring to it, for the time being, but it is not sustainable, unless someone with the time and the will volunteers to do it!

The Appeal: The Red Knot Survival Project needs supporters now desperately, to ensure that our programs will continue, to fund our work this coming May.  It is not that far away.  Remember, our sole mission at GCA is to develop and implement programs that result in the Red Knot and similar shorebirds leaving on their flights to the Arctic with more fat reserves than they would have without our help. Perhaps the  man most knowledgeable about the ecology of the Red Knot, Brian Harrington, who is also a consultant to GCA, has advised us, “Make sure it remains about the birds, and does not become just about the people.”  We take this advice to heart.  We keep that goal in sight.  If the rufa Red Knot suffers more declines and cannot recover, we will all wonder how we could have done more to save them.

If you can help, or you know an individual or an institution that can help, please be in contact with GCA about it.  My email address is blkwtrbrk@comcast.net (copy & paste).  Please ask us about specific budget items you would like to cover for us, such as $1,000 for housing for ten days in May, or $1,500 for transportation costs to get us all to Cape May this year.  We can find something large or small to fit your donation dollar amount and put that money to work directly and specifically.

Donations may be sent to Porter Turnbull, President of Global Conservation Alliance, 59-168A Kamehameha Hwy., Haleiwa, Hawaii  96712.  Right now, donations can be made by check.  Soon GCA’s website will be up; and there you can make contributions the modern way, with your credit card or Paypal account.  However, please do not wait for the website!

If you are unfamiliar with our work, there are three pages at this blog which show and tell about our work at Delaware Bay.  Find this information by clicking on any of these web addresses:

For a pictorial review of the 2009 field season, go to:

http://ottgallerymv.com/lannymcdowellavianart/index.php/global-conservation-alliance-2009-season/

For a general introduction to our mission and why we want to help the Red Knot, go to:

http://ottgallerymv.com/lannymcdowellavianart/index.php/global-conservation-alliance-2010-donorgrantor-introduction

and

http://ottgallerymv.com/lannymcdowellavianart/index.php/crusade/

Thank you so much for reading this appeal.  Please let me know how you want to help.  Time’s awasting!

Lanny McDowell for Global Conservation Alliance and The Red Knot Survival Project.

Disclaimer:  These pages are not intended to have commercial connections with Lanny McDowell Avian Art, the name of this blog.  The pages for GCA are located here as a matter of convenience, in the absence of a dedicated website for The Red Knot Survival Project at this time.

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Martha’s Vineyard, her rocky shores and the rich marine ecology that surrounds her, is very attractive to Common Eiders looking to winter in a place that grows and gives up enough tonnage of food resources to keep the feathered thousands alive through the coldest months.  The patterns of major sea duck concentration have changed this winter, presumably  moving with the food resource.  There are almost always a smaller number of eiders that congregate near the jetties at Menemsha.  What they were doing when I was there yesterday is what they often do at sea, just in a more confined space: riding the current and feeding, then flying back to take another pass on the current.  They were riding on the incoming tide ripping south between the stone jetties, with the wind at their backs, to enter the broadening waters of the tidal pond.  On cue, on a whim or reacting to an ambulatory threat they pattered into flight north against the wind between the walls of rock  to settle on the sea just outside the harbor, eventually funneling back to repeat the circuit.

This show is there for anyone to watch. I was on the Aquinnah side, but next time I will go out on the Coast Guard dock at the harbor and observe from the comfort of my car.  I include here a few bird photos which I previously sent out to my regular email list.

Birds are cool!  Lanny

These images and Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are also times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me  saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

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Take a course in good water and air, and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own.  Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.
John Muir

Especially when someone looking at bird photography sees a lot of detail in the avian subject, feathers in sharp focus or a shiny glint in the bird’s eye, he or she wonders how it is accomplished.  Often the viewer concludes, “Oh, well, the big lens!”   “What kind of glass are you using?” is the more camera-savvy question.  Guess what?  It can be the humongous and fast prime lens on the oversized gimbled tripod … on a bright sunny day … bird posed at the edge of the nest … shot from the sturdy platform of the observation tower in the well-managed nature sanctuary.  Nothing wrong with that.  Do whatcha gotta do, I say.

Here’s what I go for, though.  What I seek out and what rings my avian art bell is:   first of all, it almost does not matter what the species is;  second, I want to be free to move around (partly because stalking your subject is so much fun ) ; and, thirdly, proximity is not only quite exciting, it gives the photographer a better chance to see if his focus is accurate.  Although I am almost always shooting in manual focus,  a higher ratio of good to bad autofocus (AF) shots can be obtained  when there is less interference from other objects in the shot, when the subject is more prominent and islolated in the frame.  The downside of shooting nearby birds with the 100-400mm Canon lens I use is that the focal length of a telephoto aimed at short range is pitifully short, so any movement of the subject toward or away from the camera requires practiced and frequent focus adjustment.  Shooting close-up may also reduce the amount of light entering the lens; and that reduces the ability of AF to work well and also decreases the chances of having adequate exposure available and the likelihood of shooting fast enough to capture an image without blurring.  While I happen to like bird photos with a bit of motion implied, if there is too little light reaching the camera sensor, it is out of my hands.

The following bird photos are not from Martha’s Vineyard, but come from my recent  shorebird and horseshoe crab research stint (see previous post 06/06/09) with GCA, or Global Conservation Alliance, on beaches along Delaware Bay, where the Semi-palmated Sandpipers were the species found in the greatest numbers and, apparently, made up the last of the really large flocks to set sail for tundra expanses.

I have to throw this one in,  a Carolina Chickadee,  just because … umm,  because we are talking about getting close :

These pictures too. Just back from the beaches, in the tidal marshlands, there is another set of denizens:

OK. Semi-palmated Sandpipers:

Somebody is doing the homework:

If you have read this far, you get to offer suggestions by “Comment” for improving the appearance or substance of my blog posts.  Please feel free!

These images and Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

Birds are cool!  Lanny

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are also times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me (below right) saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

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Our Pennsylvania-based associate John Patrick Brown arranged a just-in-time house rental which offered us the option of either staying in a nice old farmhouse once owned by Lucky Luciano or using the current owners’ beach house right on Delaware Bay at a place called Highs Beach, which is just south from Cook’s and Reeds beaches, both well known as annual shorebird feeding and resting sites situated up the bay coast from Cape May.

The permits for Global Conservation Alliance (GCA)  to conduct research this year specified Cook’s, Reeds, Moore’s and Gandy’s beaches as locations for our work.  The procedure to collect Horseshoe crab eggs involved sampling certain marked plots according to  protocols developed by Norm Famous, who has the credentials and background to do that sort of thing.  Three of the four beaches were associated with the outlets of estuary systems draining out of extensive marshlands emptying into Delaware Bay from the New Jersey side.  Two of the beaches were long uninterrupted stretches of sand.  Two contained a variety of bayshore surfaces and substrata, including clay and silt layers, sections of peat and areas of mixed sand and pebbles washed by strong tidal currents.

Our objective was to identify places on the beach that horseshoe crabs would prefer for egg nests and to dig “soil” samples of a given size, record their locations and measure the density of crab eggs found in the samples stored in zip-locked bags.  After collection on the beaches, the samples were transported to the beach house rental where three GCA members and associates washed, sifted and rebagged each sample, then counted the number of eggs in each labeled bag, then tallied the egg counts for later comparison.  This sampling protocol was chiefly designed to show how the number of eggs contained in an undisturbed sample of beach area would differ from a sample collected after the beach had been disturbed by raking up the sand from as deep as nine inches and from as shallow as four to six inches.   Each set of plots contained a control plot.  Our forthcoming experiment results will be prepared by Norm Famous as a requirement of the permit issued by New Jersey Department of Fish and Wildlife, so I will not elaborate further here.

A second experiment had to do with distributing Aquamax, the manufactured food we tried out in 2008 as a possible substitute for horseshoe crab eggs.  This experiment was chiefly a matter of observing the reaction of both shorebird and gull species to food alternatives and to the areas of beach that were disturbed (raked up) in the course of our egg sampling process.

Porter Turnbull and I had arrived in New Jersey on the 26th of May, when we were joined by John Patrick Brown, who assisted us last year.  Norm Famous and Pete Gilmore, who is new to the team in 2009, arrived late on the 28th.  Teams worked on the beaches everyday at one location or another, with the exception of May 30th, which was devoted mostly to egg processing and counting after one sampling set was taken in the morning.  The beaches were sampled in this order:  Moore’s, Gandy’s, Reeds.  Cook’s Beach was used exclusively for observation, whereas the other three provided egg density samples as well as opportunities for observation.  What we found during our late May stay this year was quite different from the scene we experienced last year.  In 2008 most Red Knots and Dunlin were concentrated at Moore’s Beach, feeding shoulder to shoulder at the mouth of the estuary; and spawning crabs were not that easy to find.  This year that location was dominated by Laughing Gulls and crabs were in abundance.  Feeding and resting flocks of shorebirds could turn up anywhere along the main beaches this time, working the water’s edge or gathering at the inside corners along the beach where an eddy or a jetty concentrated the horseshoe crab eggs.

Last year it was hard to even find eggs on the surface of the beach.  In 2009 you could see in some places at certain tides an endless profusion of the small greenish eggs littering the wrack line:

Moore’s beach scene, LAGUs and crabs:

Fearless adventurer amongst the beasties:

Porter hand raking one of our test plots with John labelling samples in the background at Gandy’s Beach:

Resampling after the receding tide:

Typically we would dig out samples and rake the plots to obtain more samples starting at a low or rising tide.  Then we would watch the feeding activities of shorebirds working the advancing edge of the rising tide.  In some cases we resampled our plots, which we had marked with poles in the four corners, to measure egg densities after the passage of the high tide and the predation of the feeding birds.

Overall, I would characterize the work as tedious and the data as useful.  The human company was well matched and the locations inspiring; and the birds as always were a miracle.

We were told fairly early on that the major northward departures of Red Knots occured on the 26th, our arrival date.  However, both the weather and the numbers of shorebirds in our vicinity, and Red Knot numbers in particular, all improved daily, right up until our own departures on June 1st.  We witnessed the largest aggregations of birds at Cook’s Beach on May 31st, with thousands of Semi-palmated Sandpipers and hundreds of Ruddy Turnstones and Red Knots present.  Dowitchers, Dunlin and Sanderlings had for the most part moved out earlier.

As to collateral birding this year, I would have to say that Clapper Rails and Seaside Sparrows were the the stars that held our attention the longest.  Both are considered hard to see, yet we found that both were quite willing to be seen extensively, given the right opportunity.

We will publish a formal report for 2009 in the future, but we wanted to keep you all in the loop.  And many heartfelt thanks to all for your encouragement,  advice and support.

Best wishes, Lanny McDowell

Here is a link to a general and somewhat optimistic newspaper summary from Philly:

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20090603_Biologists_hopeful_red_knots_have_turned_a_corner.html

The birds on this stretch of beach at Gandy’s were mostly semi-palm sandpipers.  They are feeding on horseshoe crab eggs along the rising tide line and along a shallow trough dug by GCA volunteers in the course of completing a study to determine how many more eggs become available to foraging shorebirds after the sand has been raked up.  Notice the diagonal line of birds, including some turnstones, which are feeding up the beach in the disturbed area above the tideline.

Typically all the species shown here are willing to fly in mixed flocks.  I would say that Semi-palmated Sandpipers prefer to fly in a same-species flock.  More photos of them at a later date.

Sanderlings can look pretty big next to semi-palms:

Four species … and check out the leg bands:

If you want to know how big is a single horseshoe crab egg, have a look at the beak of the Red Knot in this photo:

These images and Lanny McDowell Avian Art fine art prints are available for purchase. Contact me or View my gallery.

Birds are cool!  Lanny

I have a list of folks who get an emailed notice from me with a URL to click on when I have posted a new blog.  There are also times when I just send out photos to the list without bothering to blog about them or post them to a listserve.  Not on the list?  Want to be? Just contact me (below right) saying you want to be on the list or, better yet,  subscribe to Feedburner above, in the right side column for automatic blog feeds to your email.  Getting off the list is just as simple.

If you have read this far, you get to offer suggestions by “Comment” for improving the appearance or substance of my blog posts.

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