Beginnings

ne warm May night, around midnight, I drove out to an

empty beach on Delaware Bay. The summerhouses nearby
were dark and empty, the only light the full moon shining on
the bay, and the only sound the waves gently lapping against
the sand. Just before high tide, horseshoe crabs began emerging from the
water. Their shells, some as large as dinner plates, were dark and scuffed.
These prehistoric animals, emissaries from the deep sea, were coming in to
lay their eggs in the sand. Id never seen anything quite like this. I used to go
down to the edge of the creek near my home in Gloucester, Massachusetts,
to look for spawning horseshoe crabs, their unfailing arrival sign that a hard
winter was turning to spring. There were never very many; at most Id find
six or eight. Delaware Bay is home to the worlds greatest concentration of
horseshoe crabs. On this beach, they came by the thousands, gliding effortlessly through the water, then burrowing in the sand. When the tide turned,
they surfaced, slid into the waves, and disappeared. If Id been at the beach
an hour earlier or an hour later, Id have missed them.
The next day more wildlife amassed on Delaware Bay beaches
thousands upon thousands of migrating shorebirds, an avian Serengeti,
one of the greatest concentrations of shorebirds on the eastern seaboard
of the United States. The birds remained in the bay for only a few weeks:
1

beginnings

for many years, ornithologists didnt seem to know they were passing
through. Theyd come for the horseshoe crab eggs in flocks so thick I
couldnt see the sand. Among them were a few thousand russet-colored
sandpipers, red knots. They raced along the shore, frantically grabbing scattered horseshoe crab eggs. Where had the knots come from that they were
so desperately hungry? And how could a diet of tiny eggs, each the size of a
pinhead, take them where they were going? They wasted no time: theyd
flown more than 7,500 miles to get here, and in two weeks, theyd be flying
2,000 more.
And that was only half their journey. Each year knots fly from one end
of the Earth to the other and back. Consumed by curiosity, I followed them
to learn what it takes to go such great distances, where they chose to stop
along the way and why, and what was so special about those horseshoe crab
eggs. This book is the story of that journey. I begin where many red knots
live during the northern winter, a virtually inaccessible beach on the Strait
of Magellan. When they begin flying north, I move with them, traveling to
a crowded resort in Argentina, a saltwater lagoon in Texas, a hunting
preserve in South Carolina. To see where knots build their nests in summer,
I go to a lonely camp on Southampton Island in the Arctics Foxe Basin,
home to large numbers of hungry polar bears. When the breeding season
ends and knots begin their long return to South America, I see them off,
from the boggy edge of Canadas James Bay, the foggy Mingan Islands, a
low-lying Cape Cod beach whose nearby waters are increasingly visited by
great white sharks, and finally, the bay behind my home.
The journey is not easy. I accompany dedicated biologists and birders,
tracking birds by foot, walking 10 or 12 miles every day through ice and
snow. We sit for hours in the pouring rain, counting shorebirds. We hide on
windy beaches hoping to catch them in nets. The knots are elusive. Fueled
on fat, warmed by feathers, they can go anywhere, no matter how remote.
We fly, too, watching for them from helicopters; listening for them in a
small propeller plane equipped with a radio receiver; and following them
onto the tundra with the help of bush pilots for whom a narrow strip of icy
gravel constitutes a runway. We travel by boat, train, komatik, SUV, and
ATV, on rides that range from exhilarating to hair-raising. I learn to load
and fire, reasonably accurately, a 12-gauge shotgun, and find to my surprise
on the next stopover that I miss it.

See Arctic
map

Mingan Islands

See Delaware Bay and Virginia map

See South Carolina
and Georgia map
AT L A N T I C
OCEAN

Laguna
Madre
GULF OF MEXICO

Guyana
Suriname
French Guiana
Maranho

PACI FI C
OCEAN
Lagoa de Peixe
National Park

San Antonio Oeste

0
0

1000
1000

2000

2000 mi
3000 km

See Tierra del Fuego map

Migration route of the red knot, Calidris canutus rufa (map by Bill Nelson;
source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service).

beginnings

The knots seem at home in hurricane winds that ground us and in

bug-infested, alligator-ridden swamps. I live in a mosquito-filled marsh but
on this trip am subjected to the worst concentrations of biting insects I have
ever seen. The birds forage for all their meals. Eating tiny clams and horseshoe crab eggs, they double their weight before each major flight. I taste
their food, supplementing it with wild game, gourmet meals, dried crackers,
and peanut butterand lose weight. Slogging through isolated, remote
areas looking for birds, I have a compass, GPS, and radio to keep track of
myself. The birds havewhat? By the end of this journey I am more in awe
than when I began.
The route isnt quite what I thought itd be. A few scraps of beach
crowded with laughing gulls and shorebirds are a world-renowned hotspot
for avian flu. One researcher there is funded by the Department of
Homeland Security. In another state, I spend a morning not on a beach,
but in a courtroom. Detouring off the well-marked path, I explore less
recognized twists and turns that prove important, accompanying scientists
as they uncover two previously unrecognized winter homes of young
knots. Their work comes at a critical time. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
has listed the red knot, Calidris canutus rufa, as threatened under the
Endangered Species Act; it is likely to become in danger of extinction in
the foreseeable future. Along the route, I see why. Horseshoe crabs, I learn,
matter as much to our own well-being as they do to shorebirds. I follow
horseshoe crabs to a gleaming oyster bank in South Carolina, to a biomedical company in Charleston, and then to Massachusetts General Hospital to
find out how and why my life depends on an animal that comes ashore but
once a year.
The red knot whose migration I follow, Calidris canutus rufa, is one of
six lineages of red knots worldwide. Rufa, the youngest of all the knots, flies
the greatest distances. The birds have many homes, each a critical way station,
a rung on a ladder between Tierra del Fuego and the Arctic. If only a few
footholds break, the entire journey is compromised. Some are already
broken. Some are being repaired, with hopeful result. Others are in danger of
breaking. The story and struggle of rufa red knots is the story and struggle of
all knots, and of millions of shorebirds. What would it mean if we lost them?
Migrating shorebirds speak to us. In the long arc of their journeys, in
the soft, lilting calls of black-bellied plovers across a vast mudflat, in the

beginnings

hurried dash of sandpipers along the shore, they tell us of our worldwhat
is, what is becoming, and what could be. In the quiet solitude to be found
in the company of birds on a marshy island swept by an incoming tide, on
a moonlit beach, in the cold, clear light of the Arctic summerwherever we
are relieved of the press of our busy liveswe can hear them and consider
who we are and who we wish to be. Along a meridian that runs the length
of the globe, I watch knots in their many homes, seeing firsthand how they
live from day to day and how, as increasingly large numbers of people
inhabit the narrow edge between land and sea, our lives are intertwined
with theirs. Along the way, the story upends my ideas about guns, hunters,
and hunting; about how humans and wildlife can share an increasingly
crowded and redesigned shore; and, at a time when the edge between the
human and natural world has dissolved, about what being wild now means.
I have always loved the many and exquisite ways science illuminates
our world. With beauty and clarity, it offers insight into the lives of shorebirds and horseshoe crabs, and into our evolving shoreline. Science can
suggest a direction, but science alone cannot repair our torn world. We
make our choices from another plane. Following knots, I meet many dedicated people who year after year, season after season, are looking out for
knots, striving to keep their homes at the edge of the sea safe and intact:
scientists, birders, and people who love birds but dont call themselves
birders; high school students, graduate students, rising biology stars, and
those whove given their time to shorebirds for 30 or 40 years and continue
even when they theoretically have retired. They work long days along a
flyway that encompasses at least 12 countries, where people speak at least
five languages, where the knot is known by many names, and where in one
place, it has no name. They share a common dream, to restore to abundance a bird whose numbers have precipitously declined. Their service,
rooted in science, springs from and is held by love.
In Delaware Bay I hold in my hand a knot thats flown the length of the
Earth not once, but many times. This tiny bird has an unerring instinct to
locate, over miles of coastline, individual beaches with the most plentiful food.
It has developed astonishing ways to undertake, again and again, exhausting
nonstop flights. It can bring forth a new generation in the harsh Arctic summer.
Our human politics may vary, our needs and desires may conflict, and our
values may differ, but this bird unites us along the shore of two entire

beginnings

continents, following a route that doesnt recognize our boundaries. I release

the red knot, watching it take flight, praying it may continue to find shelter and
refuge along its way, season after season and year after year. Hard questions lie
before us, questions of how or whether humans and wildlife will share our
increasingly fragile shore. Traveling through almost 120 degrees of latitude
from the bottom of one continent to the top of another looking at those questions, I began to feel that, in the words of the Persian poet Hafiz, All the hemispheres in existence lie beside an equator in your heart where, perhaps, it is
possible to see what is before us, hidden in plain sight.