"Birds' Survival Relies On World's Largest Crab Orgy"

"The Delaware Bay is the site of the largest horseshoe crab orgy in the world. Mating season brings millions of crabs onto the beaches, and tens of thousands of migratory shorebirds, who gorge themselves on crab eggs on their way to the Arctic.

Less than 20 miles from the casinos in downtown Dover, a lanky man in a floppy hat and windbreaker is hiding behind shrubbery on a beach in Mispillion Harbor.

Nigel Clark is from the British Trust for Ornithology. He's peering through his scope, trying to read tags on the legs of hundreds of migratory shorebirds feeding in front of him.

'It's amazing on these beaches to think we find birds marked in Brazil or Argentina, the very southern tip of Southern America — right at Tierra Del Fuego. That's where a majority of these birds are coming from,' Clark says."

Louisa Jonas reports for NPR's All Things Considered July 12, 2009.

See Also:

"Horseshoe Crabs Pile Up For Night Of Whoopee" (NPR)