Make you Fink on Friday

China’s New Great Wall Threatens One Quarter of World’s Shorebirds

Human disregard for other species is disgusting.

The following by Richard Conniff.

Every spring, tens of thousands of plump, russet-breasted shorebirds drop down onto the wetlands of China’s Bohai Bay, ravenous after traveling 3,000 miles from Australia.

This Yellow Sea stopover point is crucial for the birds, called red knots, to rest and refuel for the second leg of their journey, which will take them another 2,000 miles up to the Arctic tundra.

Unfortunately for the red knots, the intertidal flats of Bohai Bay are rapidly disappearing, cut off from the ocean by new sea walls and filled in with silt and rock, to create buildable land for development.  In a society now relentlessly focused on short-term profit that seems like a wonderful bargain, and the collateral loss of vast areas of shorebird habitat merely an incidental detail. As a result, China’s seawall mileage has more than tripled over the past two decades, and now covers 60 percent of the mainland coastline. This “new Great Wall” is already longer than the celebrated Great Wall of China, according to an article published Thursday in Science, and it’s just getting bigger every year—with catastrophic consequences for wildlife and people.

Source: GarryRoberts.com Read more

Nature Ramble

Sometimes Nature Ramble looks at things other than animals and birds. Today we’re looking at people, bird watchers and their behaviour as well as their quarry, in particular.

The Great Knot

Bird-watchers flock to Breydon Water to see great knot

Thousands of twitchers have tried to spot the great knot on Breydon Water

Hundreds of bird-watchers have flocked to the Norfolk coast in the hope of catching a rare glimpse of a migratory great knot in Britain.

The elusive wading bird, more at home on the Australian coast, has only been seen in the UK on three occasions since 1989, experts said.

Brian Egan, from the Norwich-based Rare Bird Alert, said the “enigmatic bird” was “exciting for many people to see”.

It was first spotted on Breydon Water, near Great Yarmouth, on Sunday evening.

“Great knot breed in a tundra habitat in Siberia and migrate as far as the Australian coast,” said Mr Egan.

The great knot (Calidris tenuirostris)

• Estimated worldwide population of 380,000
• Classified as “vulnerable” by BirdLife International due to declining numbers
• Species first spotted in the UK in Shetland in 1989, when the bird stayed for just a day
• Then seen in Cleveland in 1996, when it earned the name “Great Dot”, something which has become part of birding folklore
• Last spotted in the UK in Lancashire in 2004

Sources: Rare Bird Alert/BirdLife International

“Where this bird has come from is difficult to say for sure, but it’s likely to have been on the Asian coast and has got its route drastically wrong.

“It was around for 24 days, but was mostly seen from a very long distance so it became known as the ‘Great Dot’. Now whenever people speak of great knots in Britain, Great Dot gets a mention and at times the bird on Breydon Water has lived up to this.”

Source: BBCNews Read more, see more photos

Nature Ramble

Not doing one this week.

Instead, I’m going to send you off to look at a mystery.

Why is Britain a wildlife migration hotspot?

Can you imagine traveling to the moon and back three times? Well that is the same distance the Arctic tern covers during its lifetime. This remarkable little bird can be seen here in parts of the UK in summer during its epic migration between Greenland and Antarctica.

Of course, Arctic terns are not the only ones to visit the UK and then leave. Hundreds of millions of animals do it each year, with some traveling tens of thousands of miles to reach our shores, often risking their lives.

But what makes the UK such an attractive destination for wildlife to visit?

Source: BBCNews Check out this link

BTW, this is my 100th Nature Ramble

 

Nature Ramble

An amazing small traveler, makes a round trip migration of 16,000 miles

‘Unique’ bird migration discovered

The tag was recovered from a male red-necked phalarope in Shetland

A tracking device which weighs less than a paperclip has helped scientists uncover what they say is one of the world’s great bird migrations.

It was attached to a red-necked phalarope from Scotland that migrated thousands of miles west across the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.

The journey has never before been recorded for a European breeding bird.

The red-necked phalarope is one of the UK’s rarest birds, and is only found in Shetland and the Western Isles.

The RSPB, working alongside the Swiss Ornithological Institute and Dave Okill of the Shetland Ringing Group, fitted individual geolocators to 10 red-necked phalaropes nesting on the island of Fetlar in Shetland in 2012.

Each geolocator weighed 0.6g and was fitted to the bird with harnesses made from tubing.

It was hoped the trackers would shed light on where the birds, which are smaller than starlings, spend the winter.

After successfully recapturing one of the tagged birds when it returned to Fetlar last spring, experts discovered it had made an epic 16,000-mile round trip during its annual migration.

It had flown from Shetland across the Atlantic via Iceland and Greenland, south down the eastern seaboard of the US, across the Caribbean and Mexico, ending up off the coast of Ecuador and Peru.

After wintering in the Pacific, it returned to Fetlar, following a similar route.

Gender roles

Prior to this, many experts had assumed that Scottish breeding phalaropes joined the Scandinavian population at their wintering grounds, thought to be in the Arabian Sea.

Although long, the phalarope migration is beaten by some distance by Arctic terns, which make a return trip of about 24,000 miles between the North and South poles each year.

It had previously been thought the birds wintered in the Arabian Sea

However, the phalarope is the only known westward migration into the Pacific. This westward movement in late summer and autumn is into the prevailing weather and in virtually the opposite direction to all other migrants leaving the UK.

Numbers of red-necked phalarope in Scotland fluctuate between just 15 and 50 nesting males.

Malcie Smith of the RSPB told BBC Scotland he had almost fallen out of his chair when the tracking results showed where the birds had gone.

He added: “We are freezing up here in Shetland and it’s quite nice to think of our red necked phalaropes bobbing about in the warm tropical waters of the Pacific.

Read more