The Flight of the Red Knot: A Natural History Account of a Small Bird's Annual Migration from the Arctic Circle to the Tip of South America and Back

Rating:
Summary: The Flight of the Red Knot.
Review: The author introduces himself by describing his Rhode Island boyhood conversion -- from his BB gun to his brother's telescope. He then proceeds to bring the reader along on a rather incredible journey, observing the patterns of feast and flight of the curious migratory shorebird known as the red knot. The annual junket of sorts traces from the southern reaches of South America to the northern reaches of North America, and is nicely summarized in these words:

"Patagonia and the Canadian archipelago are the antipodes of the cycle, but neither is truly end or beginning. In both locations summer briefly holds a tenuous grasp within the looming shadow of near-perpetual winter, but the knots never experience real winter at any latitude. They always stay just one flight ahead of the nether parts of the calendar, alighting only when and where the larder is full, living out their lives in perpetual spring and summer." (p 115)

My usual science reading tends decidedly to physics, which is often thought of as "hard science." In physics, the unknowns lead us toward the deepest philosophical inquiries of human wondering (like "what is reality?"), but the mysteries of animal biology seem rather closer at hand (although this depends, of course, on the observer/ questioner). Ornithologist Brian Harrington observes and speculates, counts and calculates, and often arrives at questions whose answers are essentially mysteries: "No one quite understands . . ." and, "we have very little idea . . ." he muses. At every level, nature gently resists our hopeful desire to oversimplify it. Our story here, of the red knots' travels, is told in five chapters. The last chapter [6] considers conservation issues; what can be done and what is being done to preserve critical coastal areas and other wetlands important to migratory birds. The book includes many photographs, which are interesting in their own right, but also illustrate the text. This is a fairly quick read and an interesting one.