Read the latest King Island report from December 2018
The most recent King Island report is now available for reading. Catching was conducted between December 6 and 14. A total of 671 Ruddy Turnstone were counted over the northern, central and southern parts of the island, and 191 were captured over 5 catches. There were 67 were retraps and 41% of all turnstone captured were juveniles. In addition, 9 old geolocators (5 on yellow flags and 4 on white flags) were retrieved during this visit, of which preliminary data have been retrieved from 5.
Thanks to the team who participated: Clive Minton, Robyn Atkinson, Rob Patrick, Mark and Mem Smith, Prue Wright, Tessa Lamin, Marcel Klaassen, Michelle Willie and Katherine Leung, local King Island participants, including Graeme and Margaret Batey, Margaret Bennett and Liz.
January 01, 2019
The schizophrenic Turnstone from King Island
The interesting story about Ruddy Turnstone WMA from King Island, which has dropped in to Newcastle for the last 3 years has now been published in the Hunter Bird Observer’s Club scientific journal ‘The Whistler’. You can browse the volume and download a copy by going to the journal publication page.
November 01, 2018
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.
August 28, 2018
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
ViewtoAsia1
July 01, 2018
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.
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.
July 25, 2017
Little Terns, you win!
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
