Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

NUNAVUT
He took all the precautions one would normally take before a long flight: get some rest, eat well and hope for good weather. But Chinquapin, a male whimbrel that spends its summers breeding on or near Southampton Island in northern Hudson Bay had no way to predict the storm he would encounter on his 5,000 km journey to the Bahamas.

Chinquapin, the whimbrel that survived a flight through Hurricane Irene on its annual journey to the Bahamas, gets tagged by Brad Winn and Tim Keyes in May 2010. - photo courtesy of Georgia DNR

After fuelling up on Coats Island, 140 km south of Coral Harbour, the shorebird flew south into the path of Hurricane Irene, so far 2011's most powerful hurricane and the cause of US$10 billion of damage along the United States' eastern seaboard. But for Chinquapin, it was no big deal.

“They're not puffcakes,” said Bryan Watts, director of the Centre for Conservation Biology at The College of William and Mary, Virginia Commonwealth University, part of the consortium that tracks whimbrel migration. “They seem to be able to make it through and persist. When these birds take off from Southampton Island, and they're making a long flight, they have no idea what the conditions are in the Caribbean. They have to be able to negotiate that or the population wouldn't persist for long.”

It's a phenomenon Watts has seen time and again in the species, and it is helped by their ability to navigate.

“They have amazing situational awareness where they encounter some difficulty during migration and they know exactly where they are and are able to make an exit and get to a safe place,” he said, adding they are rare among shorebirds in that their route south has only a handful of stops. “Unlike some of the smaller shorebirds that sort of hop along in the course of migration, this particular species seems to have the ability for these incredibly long flights. Even though they move over such long distances, they depend on relatively small collection of sites throughout the year.”

The birds are creatures of habit, returning to Southampton Island each May for three weeks of breeding in advance of the trip to Virginia, where they feast on fiddler crabs, then on to the Bahamas before heading to Surinam and Brazil. And year after year, the route includes some serious storms.

“You're always hoping they're going to make it through somehow. There was a period there when we knew the bird (Chinquapin) was in the storm and then it wasn't reporting. When it next reported, it had hit landfall in the Bahamas.”

A tagged female wrimbrel named Machi survived her flight through Hurricane Irene by riding floating wrack off the East Coast throughout the storm.

Faced with such a long and unpredictable flight, whimbrels like Chinquapin store up fat, increasing their body weight by up to 50 per cent. The stored energy helps reduce the number of required stops.

“They just seem to have this incredible ability for sustained flight,” Watts said. “In one of these flights, they may be flying for four or five days without stopping. Another bird, Hope, which is down here in Virginia and left Southampton Island earlier in August, encountered a tropical storm in Nova Scotia and flew for 27 hours at a really slow flight speed of 9 km/h, and then broke through the storm and increased its speed to over 90 km/h.”

Watts notes that despite their hardiness, whimbrel populations – like those of other shorebirds – are in decline and have dropped by 50 per cent. He says his researchers are hoping to come north to find a possible cause.

“A master's student studied the population near Churchill and suggested that the populations are moving further and further north because of shrub invasion related to climate change,” he said. “The drying out of certain habitat may be playing a role, but we don't know.”

The consortium, which also includes the Nature Conservancy and Georgia Department of Natural Resources, has tracked a dozen whimbrels using satellite transmitters since 2008; they are currently tracking four, including Chinquapin. To follow Chinquapin’s flight path, visit wildlifetracking.org.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.