Phillip Hoose - Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95

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MOONBIRD

A YEAR ON THE WIND
WITH THE GREAT SURVIVOR B95

MOONBIRD

A YEAR ON THE WIND
WITH THE GREAT SURVIVOR B95

PHILLIP HOOSE

FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX
New York

Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

Text copyright 2012 by Phillip Hoose

Maps copyright 2012 by Jeffrey L. Ward

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America
by RR Donnelley & Sons Company,
Willard, Ohio

Designed by Roberta Pressel

First edition, 2012

357910864

mackids.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hoose, Phillip M., 1947

Moonbird : a year on the wind with the great survivor B95 / Phillip Hoose. 1st ed.

p.cm.

ISBN 978-0-374-30468-3

eISBN 978-4668-6706-2

1.Red knotMigrationJuvenile literature.2.Red knotJuvenile literature.3.Bird watchingJuvenile literature.I.Title.

QL696.C48H66 2012

598.072'34dc23

2011035612

For Sandi

MOONBIRD

A YEAR ON THE WIND
WITH THE GREAT SURVIVOR B95

M EET B95 , ONE OF THE WORLDS PREMIER ATHLETES . Weighing a mere four ounces, hes flown more than 325,000 miles in his lifethe distance to the moon and nearly halfway back. He flies at mountaintop height along ancient routes that lead him to his breeding grounds and back. But changes throughout his migratory circuit are challenging this Superbird and threatening to wipe out his entire subspecies of rufa red knot. Places that are critical for B95 and his flock to rest and refuelstepping-stones along a vast annual migration networkhave been altered by human activity. Can these places and the food they contain be preserved?

Or will B95s and rufas days of flight soon come to an end?

B95 CAN FEEL IT: A STIRRING IN HIS BONES AND FEATHERS . Its time. Today is the day he will once again cast himself into the air, spiral upward into the clouds, and bank into the wind, working his newly molted flight feathers for real. After weeks of flight testing he feels ready. Day by day, he has spent the nonfeeding hours during high tide carefully smoothing the barbs on each feather vane to seamless perfection. Now there are no gaps for the wind to pass through and slow him down. He has packed all the fuel he can, gorging on worms, clams, mussels, and tiny crustaceans. His inner GPS is set for north. The whole flock is rippling with anticipation, chattering, waiting for one of them to make the first move.

In the next few months, from March to June, B95 and his flock mates will fly from the bottom of the world to the topfrom the land of penguins to polar bear country. He will fly night and day, descending only to visit the regular fueling stations that have sustained him with protein all his life. He will arrive at each stop ravenously hungry, weighing much less than he did just days before. But if the food is there, and he can get to it, he will survive, refuel, and fly on.

B95 is a red knot of the subspecies rufa, a robin-size shorebird with streamlined wings that crook at the elbow and taper to a point. In northern spring and summer, his breast and much of his face are colored brilliant brick red, with reddish feathers sprinkled over his back. During the remainder of the year, his feathers change and his body becomes mostly gray and white.

B95s nameand famecomes from the letter-and-number combination inscribed on an orange plastic flag fastened around his upper left leg. He is a perfectly formed male with a long bill and powerful chest. Throughout the course of his extraordinarily long lifeabout twenty yearsscientists have captured and examined him four times, and observed him through binoculars and spotting scopes on dozens of other occasions. Because he is so old, and has survived so many difficult journeys, he has become the most celebrated shorebird in the world.

But trip by trip, B95 threads the sky with fewer companions. When he was first banded as a young bird in 1995, scientists estimated there were about 150,000 rufa red knots in existence. Then, around the year 2000, these birds began dying by the thousands. Why? Evidence points to abrupt changes in the stopover sites along their Great Circuit, and even in the air through which they fly. A special challenge is the reduction of a very important source of food at Delaware Bay. B95s plight, and that of rufa red knots in general, poses one of the great conservation questions of recent years: Can humans and shorebirds coexist?

Answers will have to arrive soon, for now experts believe that fewer than 25,000 rufa red knots remain. That means that more than 80 percent of the population has disappeared just within B95s lifetime. This looming shadow of extinction makes B95s long life all the more improbable. Scientists ask themselves: How can this one bird keep going year after year when so many of his companions drop from the sky or perish on the beaches?

B95s gritty success inspires action. A worldwide network of scientists, conservationists, researchers, students, and volunteers has sprung up to save rufa from extinction. Though they are stationed around the world, they team up to follow the knots as they migrate throughout the western hemisphere, communicating instantly with new, Web-based tools. They know they have their work cut out for them, but, like B95 himself, they are determined.

As the wind ruffles his new flight feathers and the chattering flock tenses for another seasons liftoff, B95 knows exactly where to go and what to do. But he doesnt know what will await him as he heads north. Will he find the banquet of horseshoe crab eggs he depends on when he arrives, starving, at Delaware Bay six weeks from now? Does a red tide outbreak like the one that killed so many birds in Uruguay await this flock? Will the skies over the Atlantic Ocean roar with tropical storms that will push him far off course? Will he ever see this Patagonian beach again?

The flock stirs, the urge to go becomes irresistible, and the knots lift as one, flashing gray and red, hundreds flying in tight formation, spiraling up into the clouds as if controlled by a single will. They take several practice circles together, and then rise and bank northward. For B95 and his companions it is another season of flight.