In addition, some fishermen use horseshoe crabs as bait. A balance needs to be met between people and birds so enough crabs are available for both, and the quality of wetlands stays healthy for birds and people. The Hudsonian Godwit is a large crow-sized bird with a large, straight or slightly upturned bill, dark tail, ringed broadly with white and black. In breeding plumage , the male has a chestnut colored breast and its base of bill is orange. The adults nest from late May through July in lowland marshlands near northern tundra coasts or rivers.
Males display noisy flights to claim a territory.
After mating, both the pair incubates the four eggs, with the female typically on the nest during the day and the male at night. A nest is a depression about 5 inches across, in or under the edged of a dwarf birch on the dry top of a sedge marsh. When the adults no longer need to guard their chicks, the young become secretive for about ten days, then reappear flying on nearby shorelines. After breeding in the low Arctic, most Hudsonian Godwits gather at Hudson Bay and James Bay in Canada. The Hudsonian Godwit continues southeast, passing over the coast of the US, the Atlantic Ocean, the east coast of South America and finally to the tapering coast of Argentina.