A small group of Baltimore kids are taking on a very big task in hopes of saving a species of shorebirds.

The idea for the Friends of the Red Knot hatched after Mike Hudson,11, took one of the monthly bird walks in Patterson Park presented by the Audubon Maryland - DC, where he learned that the bird could be extinct by 2010 because of a break in its food supply as it passes through our area. Mike and two friends started the group as a club at the Greenmount School. The kids developed a website and are trying to draw attention to the small bird's plight.

The red knot is a reddish migratory shorebird that every year travels from the southern tip of South America to the Arctic regions of Canada. Along the way, it stops at the Delaware Bay to eat horseshoe crab eggs. This feast fuels its last leg of the journey to the Arctic. However, according to the Friends of the Red Knot, the recent increase in the harvesting of horseshoe crabs for commercial bait has significantly decreased the birds' available food, and the red knot population stopping at the Delaware Bay shores was only 12,375 in 2005, compared with 95,000 in 1989.

The club hopes to protect the red knot by lobbying for consistent restrictions on horseshoe crab harvesting and putting the red knot on the national endangered species list. The club's website provides more information on the red knot and encourages people to write elected officials about the bird.