Moonbird: A Year on the Wind
with the Great Survivor B95
Story by Paul Roberts
Photos by Shauneen Hutchinson
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M
eet B95! The name sounds like that of
a World War II bomber, but it is not
a bomber. It is a bird, a rufa red knot
(Calidris canutus rufa), and it has flown
more miles and in rougher weather than many of those old
airplanes. Since 1995, B95 has flown more than seventeen
18,000-mile round trips from his summer home on
the southern tip of South America to his breeding
grounds on South Hampton Island in Hudson
Bay, just below the Arctic Circle
in northern Canada.