2018 News Snippets

• East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership 2018 Knots Painting Competition

  The EAAFP secretariat has announced that 2018 Knots Painting Competition deadline will extended until 3 Jan 2019.

  You can find out more about this competition on the EAAFP website.

• View to Asia
  Sculpture Exhibition 2018

  A fun idea to raise awareness of the plight of shorebirds in Broome and the East Asia Australasian Flyway has won first prize at the Shinju Matsuri, View to Asia Sculpture awards.

  First place:The Flock – Grace Maglio

  

  The Flock Oz - Broome has arrived.

  The Flock Oz is a creative, fun project aimed at increasing awareness of the shorebirds of Broome.

  

  Paint your own shorebird cut out and create your own flock at your workplace, school or community group or for your very own garden display. For more information contact waderslife@hotmail.com

  Many thanks to the Broome Men's Shed, Roebuck Bay Working Group, Broome Community Resource Centre, Tony Flaherty and Teleah Healy (Natural Resources Adelaide and Mt Lofty Ranges), DBCA Parks and Wildlife Service, residents and staff of Germanus Kent and the wider Broome community. A special thanks to the Yawuru Land and Sea unit for their ongoing support.

• Little Terns, you win!
  25 July 2018

  As a Summer visitor, the little tern migrates to Japan from Australia, Papua New Guinea, and New Zealand region every April. The little tern originally bred on sandy coasts, inlands with shingle and shells, and estuaries in central Japan. Recently, almost all their natural breeding grounds have been lost due to reclamations and development of industrial lands. So, currently, the Little Tern, lost their natural breeding grounds, breeds on the development lands before construction or during construction work. That’s why their breeding on the development lands often lead to friction with the land owners.

  Last year, a flock of Little Terns started to breed on a development land which was owned by a local public company, and the land was scheduled to be used for a car event in a few weeks.

  Because of our proposal to preserve the breeding area in the development land, the local public company had to develop an alternative area for the car event with huge cost.

  

  In this year, the local public company, seemed to learn by the experience last year, tried to interrupt the breeding of Little Terns in the development land with huge cost, also at this time: spreading a large amount of dark sand, using streamers, and hiring a couple of workers to expel the Little Terns. I don’t know how much tax money was spent on this effort, though.

  And you know what happened? The Little Terns come back again to the development land! And they started to breed in spite of interruption; the total number of Little Tern was about 600! Beloved Little Terns, you win!

  This year, we started “Little Tern decoy project”. We made hundreds of Little Tern decoys by injection moulding and placed the decoys on three potential colony sites with the cooperation of private companies.

  

  One small colony was made on one of the potential colony sites but breeding was unsuccessful due to chick predation by the Kestrel, a natural enemy of the Little Tern.

  However, we felt a certain reaction to the decoy effect. So we will definitely make this project a success next year. We believe that this decoy project will produce good results for both Little Terns and humans in the future.

  Tetsuya Nozawa
  Aichi Branch, Wild Bird Society of Japan

• Australasian Shorebird Conference, Hobart, October 27 & 28, 2018

  Registration is now open for the 2018 Australasian Shorebird Conference, which is being held at the University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay campus, on the weekend of October 27 and 28, 2018.

  Two days of oral presentations on research, conservation and management efforts on resident and migratory shorebirds will be given on the Conference theme, Losing their habitats – conservation and management strategies for migratory and resident shorebirds.

  The deadline for submitting abstracts for oral presentations is 31 July. Please send your abstract to Eric Woehler as a Word file (.doc or .docx) with a title, author(s) and affiliations and no more than 150 words for the body of the abstract.

  Further details can be found in the PDF download AWSG 2018 Registration and Information or by contacting the Conference convenor, Dr Eric Woehler.

• Learn about the valuable contribution of our New Zealand colleagues in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
  TVNZ documentary

  This wonderful documentary demonstrates the achievements of this dedicated and tenacious NZ team and we congratulate them on their efforts. With the current political attention on this region, our challenge will be to preserve this vital refueling area.

  View the TVNZ article and documentary.

• The VWSG wins the Victorian Coastal Award for Partnerships in Research and Monitoring
  

  Congratulations to the VWSG for winning the Victorian Coastal Award for Partnerships in Research and Monitoring (equal first with a combined team from Deakin Uni, Parks Vic and Uni of Melb for marine habitat amazing and monitoring). Find out more on the Victorian Coastal Council awards website.

  

• Help Pukorokoro Miranda Naturalists Trust create the world's biggest bird feeder!

  An international effort to create possibly the largest ever supplementary feeding effort is underway - and its occurring at the Pukorokoro Miranda Naturalists' Trust's sister site, Yalu Jiang National Nature reserve in Liaoning China.

  The coldest winter in 49 years has led to the die-off of one of the most important food sources in the reserve, clams. This will have significant implications for 100,000+ Great Knots as well as the majority of New Zealnd's godwits on their way north, and expecting food to fatten up for the last leg of their journey to their breeding grounds. PMNT is collecting donations to purchase farmed shellfish to drop onto the mudflats.

  Find out more and how you can help on the PMNT shorebird centre website.

• April 3, 2018 - The 8th Year
  And the exciting story of Bar-tailed Godwit TO continues. Today we saw TO for the 8th year in a row at the regular staging site Aphae Island, South Korea along with about 260 Godwit - 3 more orange flagged and one with a green flag. On the way to the site we saw also Orange-1E in Mokpo, a site that is about 16km from the site on Aphae Island. 1E visited Mokpo in 2013 and then every year was seen on Aphae Island; again a record indicating that the birds use all the sites in the region as one system.

  
  Bar-tailed Godwit TO, Aphae Island South Korea April 3 2018, © Andreas Kim

Bar-tailed Godwit 1E, Mokpo South Korea April 3 2018, © Andreas Kim

• Vale David Milton
  28 April 1958 – 14 March 2018

  Those that knew David Milton will be shocked to hear about his tragic passing recently. David was a member of the Queensland Wader Study Group (QWSG) as well as Birds Queensland. He was also Editor of the AWSG journal Stilt for many years, overseeing production of issues 33-44 between 1998 and 2003. David’s great contribution was through his expertise with data, but he was also an active organiser and participant in field surveys and catching. He will be sorely and sadly missed by many.

  

• New photographic guide to the birds of China: Vol. 2 Shorebirds

  
  This new field guide by Lin Zhang has been recently published by The Straits Publishing and Distribution Group. The guide provides detailed, high quality photos of all recorded shorebird species in China, clearly pointing out key diagnostic features. Even without English translations, readers can still glean much from the images and pointers, and with the help of Google translate, key features can be easily determined. For shorebirders planning on travelling to China, this will be a worthy field companion.

• 11th Australasian Shorebird Conference 2018
  Hobart, October 27 and 28

  The 2018 Conference will be held on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 October at the Life Sciences Lecture Theatre 1 in the Life Sciences building at the Sandy Bay campus of University of Tasmania, Hobart. The conference will run between 9am and 5pm each days, with a dinner on the Saturday night. More details to come closer to the time.

• China to scale back reclamation projects in the Yellow Sea
  January 18, 2018

  The Chinese government has announced that it will halt all ‘business-related’ land reclamation along its coast. This is a huge step forward for the conservation of migratory shorebirds (and other species) in the EAAF. Further details can be found on The People's Republic of China State Council website and the Xinhua News. See also Birding Beijing for a discussion about the implications of the proposed changes.

  The VWSG is buoyed by this fabulous news. We would once again like to thank all the people in the Flyway who have tirelessly campaigned for changes to China's policy on coastal land reclamation.

• Upcoming VWSG cannon netting Corner Inlet
  Jan 29 to Feb 1 2018

  Corner Inlet is always one of the VWSG's most exciting and beautiful catch locations. The meeting place is Manns Beach Hall, Melway map 928 E9, on Sunday 28th January between 5 and 6pm.

  Please contact Penny Johns if you're interested in joining the catch.

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