Whimbrel Numenius phaeopus By: Dijana Classification: Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Chordata Class: Aves Order: Charadriiformes Family: Scolopacidae Genus: Numenius Species: phaeopus

Natural History

The whimbrel is a beautiful bird. It is part of a group of sandpipers called curlews. Curlews are shorebirds. The whimbrel is a long, thin bird. It has a back bone so it is a vertebrate.

The birds’ body is set up similar to the human body. Birds are warm-blooded animals, but their body temperature is higher than humans, because they use a lot of energy for flight. They also have hollow bones. All of birds’ body parts are light to make flying easier. Even the reproductive organs are light.

The whimbrel reproduces on damp moorlands and along lake sides. In the wintertime it reproduces on muddy estuaries and rocky shores.

Birds reproduce mostly like humans. After the fertilization, the fertilized eggs move down a tube called the oviduct. There they are covered with a shell. Then the egg leaves the female through the cloaca.

Birds are amazing animals. They are mostly known for being able to fly. Millions of years ago the only animal that was flying were the pterosaurs. Scientists think birds came from insects and reptiles. They don’t really known for sure. The first bird ever seen in fossils was the Archaeopteryx. It was found in 1861. Birds have changed a lot since then from size to shape and from having teeth to not having them. Today birds have the crop and the gizzard to help them digest their food.

Habitat

The whimbrel lives on both sandy areas and mud. But it avoids soft mud. It lives in places like shoals, and tops of mangrove trees that face open sea.

The whimbrel is mostly found in the lower part of the United States and in Mexico. It is rare on the East Coast, in places like Maine.

This bird reproduces on all three coasts of the United States. It nests on low-arctic moorland and tundra. It usually nests on top of moss or grass that is surrounded at the base by water.

This whimbrel migrates during the wintertime and during the beginning of spring. When a bird migrates it means that it moves from one place to another. The whimbrel migrates with other shorebirds, but it defends its territory. It is usually the first out of a group of birds to warn them of danger. These shorebirds migrate in salt marshes, mud flats, and beaches. They also migrates along lake shores and wet fields.

Present Status

The whimbrel is a species of concern. A species of concern is any species of animal that is not endangered or threatened but could really easily become it because of low numbers of them, habitat loss or other things. A species of concern is a step away from being threatened.

Physical Description

Birds are easy to identify. They all have wings, a bill or a beak, two legs and feathers all over their body.

The whimbrel is a large sandpiper. This sandpiper ranges from fifteen to eighteen inches. It is usually about fourteen inches, about as big as a soda bottle. This bird is long and thin with a down-curved bill. The whimbrel’s down-curved bill is about eight and a half centimeters long. It has a gray head with black and white stripes and a dark eyeline. This large shorebird has a dark brown streaked neck and a white belly. It has a plain brown upper body with small light and dark spots. The lower body is paler than the upper body. The whimbrel also has dark, thin legs.

Diet and Feeding Habits

Different kinds of birds eat different types of food, like fruits and seeds. They also eat animals like fish and insects. The size and shape of the beak or bill a bird has suits the kind of foods that a bird eats.

The whimbrel has a down-curved bill that allows it to dig deeply into mud for tidbits. This curlew not only digs for food it also picks food from the surface. Whimbrels don’t eat as groups. They eat alone, and split up into parties. They move as they eat.

This bird eats a variety of different food. The whimbrel is an omnivore. Some of its prey are fiddler crabs, fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and aquatic invertebrates. It also eats insects, worms, seeds, berries and leaves. The whimbrel eats large prey by tearing them into pieces before eating. Like when it eats fiddler crabs it tears off their large claws before swallowing the tidbits.

Causes of Endangerment

Foxes and large raptors are the whimbrel’s predators. But besides that, the whimbrel’s biggest threat is humans. Whimbrels suffer habitat loss from destruction of nesting sites and pollution of shores.

In the early 1890’s they were hunted in the United States as they migrated south. As that happened the population went down. Now they aren’t hunted as much. But they are still hunted in some places, such as Thailand. They were hunted to replace the taste of passenger pigeons which were hunted to extinction.  I guess they didn't learn their lesson the first time.

In Maine, the whimbrel's habitat is on shores of bodies of water, which are places where humans like to be. Its threat is from human development on their nesting sites and the pollution of shores.

Personal Essay

The way diversity strengthens an ecosystem is there are different types of plants and animals so they have choices of what to eat without eating it all. The world is like a big food chain. We all depend on each other to stay alive. We depend on the sun to shine and the rain to fall so the plants can grow to give us air and make their own food that animals eat. We depend on the predators to eat the prey and if an animal’s predators all died then the animal would overpopulate if nothing else ate it.

The whimbrel’s prey are fiddler crabs, fish, crustaceans, mollusks, aquatic invertebrates, insects and worms. And if one of the whimbrel’s prey died it wouldn’t really matter because it has other things to eat, but it would mean that it would be eating more of the rest of them and that might be the problem. But if all of the whimbrel’s prey died then the whimbrel would starve and die. So the whimbrel depends on them for food.

The whimbrel’s predators are foxes and large raptors. If the whimbrel’s predators all died then the whimbrel would overpopulate. And if there were low numbers of whimbrels then foxes and large raptors would need to eat something else, even though it might be their favorite. This would give the whimbrels a chance to repopulate. 

I think this cycle is really confusing, but I see how it works. What I didn’t get before doing this expedition is that I know that a lot of animals become extinct so why don’t a lot of it’s prey overpopulate and its predators die of starvation?

But now I see that animals don't eat only one thing. They are just like us; they have other choices on their menu.

So the way diversity strengthens an ecosystem is that we have other things to eat without eating it all. Without diversity we wouldn’t. Animals can find something else to eat because there are few of what they usually eat. So they are giving it a chance to repopulate.

Before doing this expedition I didn’t know much about shorebirds. I feel bad for them because their homes are destroyed or invaded by people. When I want to get away from the world I go home. But if their habitats are destroyed and there are all these people on the shore, if I were them then I would feel invaded, nervous, and feel like I have no home.

Bibliography

1. Numenius phaeopus. 2003. http://animaldiversity.umich.edu/numenius/n._phaeopus$media.html. (February 25, 2003)

2. Whimbrel. 1999. http:// www.birdguides.com/html/ridlid/species/numenius_phaeopus.htm. (February 26, 2003)

3. Perkins, Simons.  Audubon: Birds of the Sea and Shore. United States: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1994.

4. Watkins, Patricia et al. Life Science. Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 1989.

5. Doherty, Gillian. Birds. America: Usborne Discovery. 2000.

6. Whimbrel. 2001. www.http://www.naturia.per sy.bulon/birds/Numenius_phaeopus.html. (March 15, 2003)

7. Forshaw, Joseph. Birding. China: Nature Company Guides. 1990.