A tight, fast-flying group of 15 small, gray birds appears out of the sky over the vast coastal mudflats of Mauritania’s Banc d’Arguin National Park, where the western edge of the Sahara meets the Atlantic Ocean. They circle around together, extend their long, thin legs, and flutter down to land; these young red knots have just concluded an epic trek that began in northern Siberia and passed through Europe.
The birds consumed more than an ounce of their five-and-a-half-ounce body mass to power their ever-pumping flight muscles over the course of the journey, and now, having lost so much weight, they need to eat. They quickly tidy their feathers and begin probing their long, thin shorebird bills into the wet mud.
They also begin to remake their bodies: They start breaking down the large pectoral muscles that they’d developed…
Read the full article originally published at e360.yale.edu.