About three years ago my good friend and co-founder of Migration Productions Jim Grady and I were kicking around a few ideas for our next “bird video project”. We thought a shorebird video would be a perfect fit. For starters living in Massachusetts gives us access to many shorebirds as they migrate in the spring and fall plus Piping Plovers nest on many of our beaches. From the beginning we wanted to create a video that would tell a story about shorebirds and many of the people that work to protect them, do research as well as people that just enjoy watching shorebirds. For those that have seen our hawk watch video it would have some of the same elements and would also not be an ID video. So we picked three target species to talk about, Red Knots, Piping Plovers and Semipalmated Sandpipers. We would talk about Red Knots and their time spent in Cape May, New Jersey our their journey north in the Spring. Piping PLovers and their nesting on Massachusetts beaches and many of the problems facing them and the people that use the same beaches. Finally Semipalmated Sandpipers and their migration south in August from the bay of Fundy in Canada.

So what about our trip to Cape May two weeks ago? Well we had hoped to go there last year but time did not allow so 12 months later Jim and I were able to pack our bags and all our gear and head South on Friday, May 22 bright and early for the 400 mile trip. Jim’s father joined us for this adventure and at 7:15 AM we were on the Mass Pike and then heading south into New York State and finally on to the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey arriving in Cape May about 2:30 PM.

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