Here are some monochrome photos to highlight this Horseshoe Crab season. Currently, the populations of Horseshoe Crabs, as well as of the birds that eat their eggs, Red Knots, Dunlins, Semipalmated Sandpiper, and Ruddy Turnstone, are all supposed to be in decline. There is no single cause and probably many unknowns as well.
Female Horseshoe Crab, its outer shell encrusted with sea snails and other sea shells. She was trying to shelter under a bridge over Oyster Creek at Fortescue, NJ.
Dunlins eating Horseshoe Crab eggs. They must have found a food spot!
A good scratch: Ruddy Turnstone between feedings on Forstescue beach.
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You’d think after all the eons that this has taken place that the crabs would have evolved another time or place to spawn.
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Indeed. Another thing is that they have not, over 400 million years, developed a good way to flip over once a wave or other crabs upend them.
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So sad
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I agree. Thank you for commenting!
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