Come one,Come all..to the Horseshoe Crab Egg stravaganza ..all Red Knots>>please bring friends and family!

Howdee all,

I am submitting this for Bird Photography Weekly…There will be birds in this post..I promise!

Wow…This was some party! Horseshoe crabs like I have never seen before…doing their thing..laying eggs.

Slaughter beach, DE The eggs are very tiny…they lay thousands

Horseshoe Crab Mating Ritual

“Each spring during the high tides of the new and full moons, thousands of horseshoe crabs descend on the Delaware Bay shoreline to spawn.

Males, two-thirds the size of their mates, cluster along the water's edge as the females arrive. With glove-like claws on its first pair of legs, the male hangs on to the female's shell and is pulled up the beach to the high tide line.

The female pauses every few feet to dig a hole and deposit as many as 20,000 pearly green, birdshot-sized eggs. The male then fertilizes the eggs as he is pulled over the nest. After the spawning is complete, the crabs leave and the waves wash sand over the nest.”  click here to learn more and here

Birdies are here to feast on these eggs!   

  birds eating Horseshoe crab caviar!

majority of these are semi-palmated sanpipers

Check out the video..you can get a better idea of how many Horseshoe there were.

There were hundreds of Ruddy Turnstones

Least Sandpipers

Short-billed Dowitchers  Red knots..Well this is not a real one…I still don't have a digiscoping camera…since mine stopped working… And my 20x Canon could not reach that dark spit on the right so that you could see the hundreds of red knots and other shore birds  ..if i had a working digiscoping camera..I could have shown you a hundreds of red knots!  Instead how about another Short billed DowitcherFrom left to right Short billed Dowitcher,Least Sandpiper, Willet

This photo is  great for size comparison …click on the photo.On a more serious note..you should read this about

The Plight of the Red Knot 

“Rufa red knots need about two weeks at Delaware Bay to recover from the long flight from South America and to store nutrients for the onward flight to their Arctic breeding grounds”

“horseshoe crabs were heavily overharvested as bait for the conch and eel fisheries, and this had a disastrous impact on red knots, which were unable to refuel properly”

You can help the plight of the red knot by Donating to

Delmarva Ornithological Society

If you are ever in Delaware this time of year…You must see this Amazing Eggstravaganza!

 

Check out more great birdie shots at