OPAS BOOK DISCUSSION GROUP
Title: The Narrow Edge: A Tiny Bird, an Ancient Crab, and an Epic Journey
Author: Deborah Cramer
Date: January 28, 4 PM – 5:30 PM
Discussion Leader: Bob Phreaner
Meeting Location: Dungeness River Audubon Center
Cost: Free
Read the discussion questions.
“The Narrow Edge is at once an intimate portrait of the small red knot and a much larger exploration of our wondrous, imperiled world.” – Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction that we reviewed in 2019.
The Red Knot migrates 19,000 miles annually from the tip of Patagonia to breed in the Arctic.
This “Robin” of shorebirds is fueled in part by the eggs of the primordial horseshoe crab whose blue blood is in demand for revealing the presence of gram negative bacteria in the biomedical industry.
The current census of horseshoe crabs is not enough to support an increase in shorebird populations.
Calidris canutus rufa is the first U.S. bird listed because global warming threatens its existence. It will not be the last: the Red Knot is the twenty-first century’s “canary in the coal mine”.
From the publisher:
Click on book to enlarge.
In a volume as urgent and eloquent as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, this book reveals how the health and well-being of a tiny bird and an ancient crab mirrors our own. Each year, red knots, sandpipers weighing no more than a coffee cup, fly a near-miraculous 19,000 miles from the tip of South America to their nesting grounds in the Arctic and back. Along the way, they double their weight by gorging on millions of tiny horseshoe crab eggs. Horseshoe crabs, ancient animals that come ashore but once a year, are vital to humans, too: their blue blood safeguards our health. Now, the rufa red knot, newly listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, will likely face extinction in the foreseeable future across its entire range, 40 states and 27 countries. The first United States bird listed because global warming imperils its existence, it will not be the last: the red knot is the twenty-first century’s “canary in the coal mine.” Logging thousands of miles following the knots, shivering with the birds out on the snowy tundra, tracking them down in bug-infested marshes, Cramer vividly portrays what’s at stake for millions of shorebirds and hundreds of millions of people living at the sea edge. The Narrow Edge offers an uplifting portrait of the tenacity of tiny birds and of the many people who, on the sea edge we all share, keep knots flying and offer them safe harbor.
Accolades:
2016 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award
2016 Reed Environmental Writing Award
2016 National Academies Communications Award
Book Availability
This book may be available directly or via inter-library loan through your local NOLS branch. Alternatively, please consider purchase options that directly benefit OPAS or DRAC. Titles can be purchased in multiple formats through Amazon Smile (smile.amazon.com; select Olympic Peninsula Audubon Society or Dungeness River Audubon Center as supported charity) or ordered in print format from DRAC (which benefits their educational programs) by stopping in or calling (360) 681-4076 with your credit card information.
[Learn more about the Book Discussion Group and upcoming book selections]