In mid-July at the Clay Avenue wetlands in Lyndhurst, birder Chris Takacs saw a distant Semipalmated Sandpiper with a brightly colored tag on its wing.

Chris trained his spotting scope on the bird and jotted down the number. When he got home, he reported his sighting to http://www.bandedbirds.org/

Later in the month, he got word that the bird was tagged 18 months earlier in French Guiana, South America.

As it turns out, that bird had been tagged down there by a fellow New Jerseyan, David Mizrahi,vice president of research and monitoring for the New Jersey Audubon Society. Small world — especially if you are a migrating shorebird. Or not. French Guiana is 2800 miles away.