Wader migration through Washington state is really spread out this year. Usually there is a huge rush of birds in the last week of April and the first week of May. Red Knot is one of the later species to show up and today there was flock of at least 400 at Bottle Beach. Usually these birds show up around the 5th of May, staying for a few days before pushing north.

The origins of the birds found on the Pacific coast are not currently known. The plumage suggest they are in between the sub-species, rufa, which breeds in central Canada and the nominate race, canutus, which breeds in NE Siberia. Birds that show up at Grays Harbor probably breed around the Chukchi Sea, on Wrangel Island and in NW Alaska. Where they spend the winter is a complete mystery.

Knots probably have the most dramatic migration of any shorebird, making huge journeys between well-defined stopovers. Birds of the race rufa winter in Patagonia at the southern tip of South America and make the journey to their breeding grounds around Ellesmere Island in arctic Canada in four or five huge jumps. The most dramatic is the non-stop flight from NE Brazil out across the Atlantic Ocean to the Delaware Bay where they refuel, with hundreds of thousands of other waders, on the eggs of Horseshoe Crabs which spawn along the bay in late April and early May.

The birds at Bottle Beach were really fat, this bird obviously well fed with a distinct 'spare tire' around its neck and a huge pot-belly. The birds were preparing for a long journey. Most other waders stopping at Grays Harbor make the next jump to the Copper River delta in south Alaska however knots are apparently putting on much more weight so it is possible that their next flight takes them all the way to Wrangel Island.