Nature Conservancy Magazine: Winter 2008 - NewsFront: Winnie the Whimbrel

Go Deeper

Nonstop to Alaska
In May, scientists equipped a whimbrel — a large North American shorebird — from Virginia's Eastern Shore with a tiny satellite transmitter.

Whimbrel Update
Migration is a treacherous enterprise. Biologists believe Winnie either died or lost her transmitter along the shores of Lake Superior in August.

In May 2008, Barry Truitt, The Nature Conservancy’s chief conservation scientist at the Virginia Coast Reserve, helped fasten a tracking device onto a whimbrel to get a sense of the migratory bird’s flight path up to the Hudson Bay in Canada.

But Winnie, as the whimbrel was nicknamed, wasn’t interested in stopping at the Hudson Bay. “ The bird flew to Alaska,” says Truitt. “It was pretty amazing — and unexpected.”

Populations of a number of migratory shorebirds that stop over at the Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve have seen a dramatic decline in the past couple of decades, and Truitt and colleagues at the Center for Conservation Biology at the College of William and Mary are hoping the tracking devices will help show areas where migratory birds need more protection.

“Winnie’s flight has already thrown out the assumption that all the birds on the Atlantic Coast go to the Hudson Bay region, and all the West Coast birds go to Alaska. Her travels will help us develop new conservation strategies for highly migratory bird species.”

Winnie’s marathon ended unexpectedly in September, when the scientists lost track of her in Wisconsin. Given the surprising findings from this first effort, the scientists have expanded the project, and are now following a whimbrel nicknamed Willie on his winter sojourn to the Bahamas.

—Curtis Runyan