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

When the bird lifted off from its marsh resting site, researchers hoped its flight would answer lingering questions about the whimbrel’s migration.

But this whimbrel, nicknamed Winnie, didn't read the flight plan. Instead of heading for breeding grounds at Hudson Bay in central Canada, as expected, Winnie flew nonstop to Alaska.

Nature.org spoke with Conservancy scientist Barry Truitt about Winnie's journey and what kinds of questions it raises — and answers — about shorebird migration.

nature.org: What exactly is a whimbrel?

Barry Truitt: A whimbrel is a large brown shorebird with a long decurved (or down-turned) bill. It’s in the sandpiper family.

In the Western Hemisphere we have two subspecies of whimbrels: the birds that breed around Hudson Bay in central Canada and the birds that breed in Alaska/northwest Canada. 
 

nature.org: What did you learn by monitoring Winnie's flight?

Barry Truitt: The assumption was that all the whimbrels on the Atlantic coast were from the Hudson Bay population and all the whimbrels on the Pacific coast were from Alaska and northwest Canada.

But this bird, which is the first we’ve been able to track, was an Alaskan bird on the East Coast.

So it’s thrown open the whole question of that assumption. Shorebird biologists used to wonder if whimbrels would cross the Isthmus of Panama, and now this bird crossed the whole continent of Canada in six days.
 

nature.org: And Winnie did this flight virtually non-stop?

Barry Truitt: If the bird stopped anywhere, she didn’t stay more than an hour, at most, so it was apparently a non-stop flight.

The transmitter also has an altitude sensor. We thought whimbrels stayed a couple thousand feet up out of the surface winds, but Winnie flew right into the surface winds at 500 to 1000 feet altitude.
 

nature.org: We know her now as Winnie, but originally her nickname was “chicken whimbrel” — why?

Barry Truitt: We called the two biggest birds that we caught this spring “chicken whimbrels” because they were as fat as oven-stuffer chickens. This bird (Winnie) was 640 grams.

These two are arguably the heaviest on record. As far as we know, no one’s ever weighed them on migration where they fatten up for these long-distance flights.
 

nature.org: They must be well-fed. What are they eating?

Barry Truitt: Fiddler crabs, almost exclusively, here. We have a very high density of fiddler crabs along the mainland marshes and mudflats. It’s a globally important stopover site.

Bryan Watts from the Center for Conservation Biology and I did surveys in the mid-1990s, and we calculated that 80 percent of the hemisphere’s population of whimbrels was coming through the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

This is essentially their last coastal stopover before shorebirds like Winnie head inland toward Hudson Bay or northwest Canada and Alaska. Her flight has highlighted the critical importance of the Virginia Coast Reserve for migratory shorebirds.
 

nature.org: How did you go about tagging Winnie?

Barry Truitt: We used a solar-powered satellite transmitter that weighs 9.5 grams and was fastened on the bird with an innovative Teflon harness. Anything less than 3 percent of the bird’s body weight is ideal and this is about 1.5 percent.

Winnie’s load is roughly equivalent to a 200-pound man carrying a three-pound backpack.
 

nature.org: Who are your key partners in this project?

Barry Truitt: This is a collaborative project between the Conservancy and the College of William & Mary's Center for Conservation Biology. They had a two-man field crew, Fletcher Smith and David Curtiss, and then Libby Mojica from the center actually attached the transmitter to the bird. She’s the one who’s trained specifically in that.
 

nature.org: How long will we be able to track Winnie?

Barry Truitt: The projected life of the transmitter is up to 36 months, but you never know what’s going to happen. It could potentially be up to three years — or the transmitter could fall off tomorrow and we’d be out of business. We hope to get at least a year out of it.

nature.org: How is this new information going to be used?

Barry Truitt: We’ve begun networking with shorebird researchers in Canada and Alaska. We hope to work with other researchers wherever this bird goes to winter.

Winnie’s flight creates a map for other sites we may need to include in this network. We know people in Colombia and Alaska and Chile who are studying whimbrels, and this information will help fill in the gaps. It’s the beginning of developing conservation strategies for highly migratory species.

(June 2008)

Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Barry Truitt/TNC (Winnie the whimbrel); Photo © Barry Truitt/TNC (Winnie the whimbrel takes flight); Map © The Nature Conservancy in Alaska; Photo © TNC (Barry Truitt).