In April 2002, I joined a team from Point Reyes Bird Observatory that flew down to the wetlands along Bahia Santa Maria in Sinaloa, Mexico to trap shorebirds as part of a project to study their migration along the Pacific coast of North America to their breeding ground in Alaska.

The project was organized by scientists from the United States Geological Survey, Point Reyes Bird Observatory and Prince William Sound Science Center involved a team of over 30 partners and covered the entire western coast of North America from northern Mexico to the North Slope of Alaska.

Fifty-nine western sandpipers and twenty-nine long-billed dowitchers were caught and fitted with tiny radio transmitters, each weighing around 1.0g. For the following six weeks, teams of scientists and volunteers listened for the arrival of the radio-tagged birds at all the major stopover sites along the Pacific Coast Flyway. Over 50 birds were relocated from on their northward journey ranging from the Salton Sea in California to the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska.

Here are some photos of the fieldwork carried out in Sinaloa, Mexico.