John K. Flores: Important monitoring continues on Gulf Coast

It’s the last day of April. It’s the kind of spring day you want to be at the beach anywhere along the northern Gulf Coast, while those stuck in the north country are still trying to figure out if winter is over or not.
However, on this day I’m not spending time relaxing in the sand with an umbrella shading me while listening to the surf crash along the shore. Instead, I’m at a camp on Grand Isle waiting for the tide to turn with David Newstead, director of the Coastal Bird Program at Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Newstead is in Grand Isle to trap Rufa Red Knots, a rusty-orange robin-size species of shorebird that he has been monitoring since 2009, due to its steady decline since the 1980s. A population decline by some estimates that may be more than 75-80%.
While taking up some of Newstead’s valuable time, he and I discuss the plight of Red Knots and how they wound up being listed in 2015 as “threatened” on the Endangered Species List.
Rufa Red Knots during migration pass along the Atlantic coast. Initially it was assumed one of the main causes for the bird’s decline was the overharvest and therefore decline of horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay area. Subsequently, that led to a reduction in horseshoe crab eggs, an important food source that Red Knots specialize on to fatten up in the spring before their migration northward to the arctic.
To list a species, Newstead pointed out that you must compile everything that’s known about it, and then fill as many knowledge gaps as you possibly can through additional research.
In 2009, Newstead was contacted by Larry Niles, a wildlife biologist in New Jersey who had been working with Red Knots and horseshoe crabs in Delaware Bay. Initially, Newstead says, Niles was just “poking” around to see what he knew about the birds in Texas. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a lot of answers. That’s when Niles and Newstead began working on a project together to trap and install tracking devices on Red Knots in an effort to find out where they were wintering.
Newstead said, “There was a lot of records from the fall and spring, so the assumption was they were wintering somewhere else. We weren’t seeing any of the Red Knots in Texas that they had been marking for years in Delaware Bay and along the Atlantic coast.”
“So, it turns out once we got data back from those devices,” Newstead continued, “almost all of the birds were wintering in Texas. The next piece of the puzzle was, well, where the hell are they? Because, we don’t have records. We didn’t have a lot of winter records for these birds.”
That’s when Newstead started catching birds himself and doing other tracking projects that included aerial and radio telemetry for a couple years. What he discovered was the birds were there all the time.
According to Newstead, they were on immense tidal flats located in south Texas that can extend for miles and are inaccessible to birders.
“We found out that there’s an actual wintering population in Texas and they’re unique. They’re not going through Delaware Bay, and they’re not effected by horseshoe crab harvest and things like that. They’re being affected by other things, but not horseshoe crabs.”
In talking with colleagues in Louisiana around the same time, they also were seeing a spring buildup of Red Knots in places like Grand Isle and Elmer’s Island, but they weren’t seeing any Texas marked birds. So, the question was, just like the Texas population, where were they wintering in Louisiana?
Newstead felt, since roughly 10 percent of the Texas Red Knot population were marked, then some of those birds should have been showing up in Louisiana. It was then in partnership with the Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program, Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Natural Heritage Program, the U.S. Department of Interior, Port of Fourchon, and the Town of Grand Isle, a plan was developed to trap and track Red Knots in 2014, similar to the project Newstead had done in Texas.
The use of light-level geolocation data loggers allowed Newstead to, as he put it, dig around where the birds are throughout its annual life cycle. Through his research, one of the things Newstead determined was one third to one half of the Louisiana bird’s population were wintering further south, but an equal or larger portion were indeed wintering in Louisiana, but where?
The Louisiana Red Knots wintering further south were more specifically along the Pacific coast of Central America and as far down as southern Chile on an island known as Chiloé.
Newstead said, “The Pacific coast of southern Chile is very rocky and not very good habitat except for the island of Chiloé. That particular island has a number of little embayments that provide good habitat. It’s a unique population, because they’re separated from other groups by hundreds and thousands of miles. It also seems to be made up of Rufa Red Knots and another subspecies of Red Knots known as Roselaari.”
Interestingly, an Elmer’s Island bird banded and marked “077” on April 25, 2016, was sighted near Galveston, Texas, exactly nine years later on April 25, 2025. The Red Knot had been previously resighted multiple times on its wintering grounds in Chiloé. To reach the arctic breeding grounds, the Red Knot would have to travel an unimaginable 9,000 miles.
Newstead says all signs were pointing to the Chandeleur Islands. What’s more, further investigation via aerial and ground surveys indeed revealed there were some 2,500 Red Knots wintering in the Chandeleurs and some further west all the way to the Isles Dernieres Barrier Islands south of Dulac.
“So, Louisiana has got its own population that basically moves a little bit west, which is not to say we don’t occasionally see birds from Texas here and vice versa, but it’s not many. The other thing about Louisiana is these birds, for the most part, are not going through Delaware Bay either,” Newstead said.
Through his research Newstead has determined there are three populations of gulf birds. One in Texas, one in Louisiana, and one in Florida, of which the Florida population doesn’t intermingle with Louisiana’s population.
Newstead notes, none of the three gulf Red Knot populations are doing well. He points out that some of the Florida population does migrate through Delaware Bay and could be affected by the horseshoe crab decline, but there are other things as well.
Loss of habitat, human interaction, rising sea level from climate change, are some of the things biologists have cited over the years. But late season snowstorms or snow melt can also affect productivity on the arctic breeding grounds by reducing habitat, Newstead says.
However, Newstead, who did his doctoral dissertation on Red Knot survival says red tide is killing a lot of the birds. Moreover, though not so much in Louisiana, red tide is a severe problem in Florida and a sporadic problem in Texas.
Around four o’clock I met the team I was to accompany on Elmer’s Island. For the next couple of hours, the biologists performed prey sampling along the beach at predetermined 1,500 meter transects. More specifically, looking for Coquina Donax, a hard shell bi-valve prey and important resource that Red Knots can reliably get to.
Random core samples were taken at 500-meter intervals along each transect that had each team sifting through sandy muck looking for anything edible. During this process, we also scouted the beach for Red Knots to potentially trap towards evening at low tide, which we did find.
To be a good biologist, you must have patience. During the week the CBBEP and BTNEP teams had to deal with poor tides, winds, and spooky birds coming off roost to feed in the late afternoon falling tide. What’s more, prime catch time most afternoons was closer to dark.
For a while it was much like a game of pickleball, as we raced back and forth along the sandy beach trying to pick out which was the better group to attempt a capture.
To trap the Red Knots, Newstead would be using a cannon net. I pondered how he was going to get the birds scattered in little bunches here and there across miles of beach into a 10-meter by 10-meter spot of sand where he could fire the net over them.
Finally, a spot was selected that had a decent bunch of birds, and Newstead set up close to them. A few of the Red Knots wanted no part of it and flew off, while those remaining were more interested in probing the sand for food.
Once the cannon net was set in place, Newstead made a wide loop through the sand dunes and then back onto the beach where the birds were between him and the net.
Newstead says there’s a term developed around cannon netting by English researchers called “twinkling.” Derived from ballroom dancing, the thought is to give your partner a little nudge or a little pressure.
Newstead would make a good candidate for “Dancing with the Stars,” because the Red Knots waltzed into the trap as if they were choreographed. That’s when Newstead remotely fired the cannon catching five Red Knots.
With birds in hand, the teams went to work banding, marking, and taking critical measurements and weight of each bird while being careful to not stress them any further.
Standing next to Newstead, I noticed he had a look of satisfaction and seemed to be enjoying the whole outcome. While gazing towards the horizon where the sun was now setting on Elmer’s Island, Newstead says to me, “We see a lot of sunrises and sunsets in what we do…”
John Flores is the Morgan City Review’s outdoor writer. He can be contacted at gowiththeflow@cox.net.