Time and Place: The Sandpipers of Fundy

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The semi-palmated sandpiper is one of the tiniest shore birds on the planet. Fully fed and rested, it weighs about 40 grams. Yet each year, huge flocks of these birds fly from the Canadian Arctic to South America, and back, a journey several thousand kilometres long. The trip includes one leg that is a four-day, non-stop flight over the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, a distance of 7,000 kilometres, the width of the United States. To prepare for this journey, hundreds of thousands of sandpipers make an annual 10-day stopover at a few select beaches in the upper reaches of the Bay of Fundy in eastern Canada. To see such flocks is a truly astonishing sight. In the Fundy mudflats exposed by the ebb tide, the birds feed voraciously on tiny, oil rich mud shrimp. On the rising tide, they sleep on the rocky beaches. But the sandpipers are late this year, and conditions are changing in Fundy. The return of falcon predators, increased human intrusion and changing weather patterns along their migratory route are raising concern among biologists that the sandpipers may not get the food and rest they need for the most arduous leg of their marvelous migration. It is the Time & Place of the Sandpipers of Fundy.