New Bar-tailed Godwit Subspecies

The description of a new subspecies of Bar-tailed Godwit begs two questions, ‘How do we identify new subspecies?’ and ‘Is the concept of a subspecies helpful?’. Put simply, the answers are ‘That depends’ and ‘Yes, especially when subspecies are the focus for conservation action’.

A new study of Bar-tailed Godwits, and the proposal to identify Limosa lapponica yamalensis as a new race, usefully highlight the importance of the flyway between Siberia and the Arabian Sea and the challenges being faced by waders that use this migration route.

Limosa lapponica yamalensis

Bar-tailed Godwits breed across the whole of northern Eurasia and in Alaska. Since the last Ice Age, following glacial retreat, new breeding opportunities in northern latitudes have become available to waders. The emergence of separate migration flyways, linking wintering and breeding areas, has led to a divergence of the species into a number of distinct populations, some of which have already been defined as subspecies. In their paper in IBIS, Roeland Bom (NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research) and colleagues from the Global Flyway Network argue that the taymyrensis subspecies should be further divided between those that winter in the Middle East (and presumably East and South Africa) and those that winter in West Africa. Their recommendation is based on studies of migratory behaviour, breeding area, morphology (measurements) and population genetic differentation in mitochondrial DNA. Their main focus has been a study of spatial and temporal differences in migration routes.

How many subspecies?

The most famous subspecies of Bar-tailed Godwit is baueri; these amazing birds fly directly from Alaska to New Zealand at the end of the breeding season and return via the Yellow Sea in spring. Theirs is the most impressive migration route of any wader, including non-stop flights of well over a week. These are the largest Bar-tailed Godwits.

Bar-tailed Godwits wintering in Australia are mainly birds of the menzbieri race. These breed from central Siberia across to north-east Russia and migrate north and south via the Asian coast, especially the Yellow Sea. Bar-tailed Godwits breeding further south in eastern Russia are usually described as anadyrensis, these birds are smaller than baueri but bigger than menzbieri.

Bar-tailed Godwits breeding in western Siberia have all been known as taymyrensis, named after the Taymyr** Peninsula, while those breeding in Scandinavia, Finland and the far west of Russia are identified as lapponica. Nominate Limosa lapponica lapponica birds winter in northwest Europe and most taymyrensis use the East Atlantic Flyway to winter at least as far south as Guinea-Bissau in West Africa. Taymyrensis is the smallest race. Lapponica and taymyrensis were recognised as separate subspecies two decades ago and this differentiation has been useful in discussions about Bar-tailed Godwit conservation. In the UK we see both lapponica and taymyrensis, as discussed in Bar-tailed Godwits: migration and survival.

Until now, birds migrating south from western Siberia, as far as East and South Africa, have been considered to be taymyrensis and it is these birds that have been reclassified – with the new name of yamalensis, after the region of Russia in which the subspecies breeds.

** In the IBIS paper, the authors use Taimyr (rather than Taymyr) as this is preferred by Russian co-authors. I am maintaining consistency within WaderTales.

What’s different?

The studies summarised in the IBIS paper by Bom et al are designed to test whether Pavel Tomkovich, who has studied Russia’s artic-breeding waders for several decades, was right when he suggested that taymyrensis should be split into two subspecies. (See Population structure and migratory links of Bar-tailed Godwits: Current knowledge and unsolved issues in Achievements in Studies on Waders of Northern Eurasia). Based on a small number of movements of ringed birds between areas where there are few birdwatchers, Pavel suggested that L. l. taymyrensis likely comprises two distinct (flyway) populations, one wintering in the Middle East, West Asia and East Africa and breeding on the northern West-Siberian Plain, and the other wintering in West Africa and breeding on and around the Taymyr Peninsula.

Using satellite-tracking, Roeland Bom and colleagues have now described the migration routes, breeding destinations, and annual-cycle timing of Bar-tailed Godwits using wintering areas in the Middle East (Oman) and West Africa (Mauritania and Guinea-Bissau). To understand further the extent to which the two groups are different and whether or not there is any mixing of the two populations, they also examined differences in mitochondrial DNA.

Tracking through space and time

Members of the research team attached solar-powered tags to eastern taymyrensis Bar-tailed Godwits in Oman and western birds in Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau and the Wadden Sea. 52 birds caught between 2015 and 2018 provided usable tracks; 11 birds (12 tracks) linked the western wintering/migration route to the area in and around the Taymyr peninsula, while 9 birds (19 tracks) linked the Middle East to the northern part of the West Siberian plain. To limit potential negative effects of carrying extra weight, only the largest birds were tagged, which means that all of the tags were deployed on females.

Bar-tailed Godwits from wintering areas in the Middle East staged for several days in the areas around the Caspian and Aral Seas, during both northward and southward migration. Both of these areas were already thought to be important for passage waders but analysis of tracking data emphasise the critical role they play in the annual cycle of Bar-tailed Godwits. Some birds also spent short periods of time at sites in the United Arabian Emirates, Iran and India. After leaving their breeding sites, some birds moved up to 1,000 km north, to feed in high-Arctic coastal Siberia, before embarking on southward migration.

Bar-tailed Godwits tracked from wintering sites in West Africa staged in the Wadden Sea, during both northward and southward migration, with other staging points in Spain, Portugal and France, during northward migration. From the Wadden Sea, most West Africa birds flew directly to the northern West-Siberian Plain (near or in the breeding area of the Middle East birds) before heading for the Taymyr Peninsula. All birds routinely moved north before leaving for the Wadden Sea, with many using the same fuelling areas as Middle East birds.

Although birds from West Africa and the Middle East used the same feeding areas in spring and post-breeding, the phenology of the two populations were different. The northward migration, the arrival in the staging and breeding sites and the southward migration of Middle East birds were earlier than for the West Africa birds. Some birds of the two groups could be found in the same areas in Siberia in the pre- and post-breeding staging, emphasising the fact that timing differences can be just as important as spatial separation when it comes to the evolution of subspecies. This ‘spatial overlap but with timing differences’ story is similar to that seen in limosa and islandica Black-tailed Godwits in The UK and The Netherlands, as discussed in Godwits in, godwits out: springtime on the Washes.

Body size and shape

The measurements of taymyrensis and yamalensis overlap but there is a tendency for Middle East birds to have smaller bills and longer wings than West African birds. The authors suggest that, given that the two subspecies have similar diets during the non-breeding season, the different bill structure may be related to feeding requirements during the breeding season, with taymyrensis breeding in open tundra and yamalensis breeding in forest tundra and bogs within the boreal zone. It is interesting to note that the morphological differences between the taymyrensis and yamalensis subspecies are greater than those between taymyrensis and lapponica.

Genetics

West African and Middle East birds could not be separated using genetic tools available to the researchers. The authors point out that there is very little genetic variation between the three more western subspecies (lapponica, yamalensis and taymyrensis), indicating that either these three populations may have diverged recently (i.e. well after the last Ice Age) or that there is still some (small) geneflow between subspecies. The authors dicusss this in depth, in the context of all known populations of Bar-tailed Godwits and of waders in general.

A new subspecies

Roeland Bom and colleagues conclude that the old taymyrensis taxon consists of two distinct populations with mostly non-overlapping flyways, which warrant treatment as separate taxonomic units. They argue that ‘separation in space and time’ can define separate subspecies and that these differences will become apparent before morphological (size and shape) differences develop and long before it will be possible to spot genetic differences.

Breeding locations of tagged Bar-tailed Godwits

Yamalensis Bar-tailed Godwits breed on the northern West-Siberian Plain including the Yamal Peninsula. Birds of the subspecies follow the Central Asian Flyway, with main stopover sites in the Caspian Sea and the Aral Sea. Satellite tracking has connected Oman with other wintering areas in the Middle East, Iran, Pakistan and West India. It is likely that some birds continue further south on the West Asian – East African Flyway, with two, earlier ring recoveries showing that the subspecies can winter as far south as South Africa.

Conservation considerations

One of the key benefits of defining yamalensis as a new subspecies is that priority setting (and hence funding) for conservation action is often defined at the subspecies level. As we learnt from Ashwin Wisvanathan and Les Underhill at the International Wader Study Group conference in 2021, the numbers of waders spending the non-breeding season at the southern extremes of the Central Asian Flyway (in India) and of the West Asian – East African Flyway (in South Africa) have declined alarmingly over the last few years.

Roeland Bom and colleagues quote population estimates for taymyrensis and yamalensis Bar-tailed Godwits of 600,000 and 100,000-150,000 respectively but these are old numbers and West African winter populations are known to be declining. It is important to establish new population estimates and trends for the two populations and better to understand the migration of yamalensis. Potentially, more satellite tracking might help to suggest where to look for wintering yamalensis along the vast coastline from the southern tip of Africa to the southern tip of India, and to identify further spring and autumn stop-over sites.

Paper

The paper in IBIS concludes with a detailed description of the subspecies Limosa lapponica yamalensis, together with measurements that separate it from other races. You can read more in:

Central-West Siberian-breeding Bar-tailed Godwits (Limosa lapponica) segregate in two morphologically distinct flyway populations. Roeland A. Bom, Jesse R. Conklin, Yvonne I. Verkuil, José A. Alves, Jimmy de Fouw, Anne Dekinga, Chris J. Hassell, Raymond H.G. Klaassen, Andy Y. Kwarteng, Eldar Rakhimberdiev, Afonso Rocha, Job ten Horn, T. Lee Tibbitts, Pavel S. Tomkovich, Reginald Victor & Theunis Piersma. IBIS.

Other WaderTales blogs about waders on the West Asian – East African flyway

Well-travelled Ring Plovers makes a link between North Africa and the furthest northeast corner of Russia, extending the reach of the West Asian – East African Flyway further east than sometimes shown on maps.

In search of Steppe Whimbrel describes the migration of Numenius phaeopus alboaxilliaris, a Whimbrel subspecies that has already been declared extinct once. The subspecies migrates between the steppes of Kazakhstan and Russia and coastal East Africa.

Following Sociable Lapwings describes the migration of this threatened species along both the West Asian – East African Flyway and the Central Asian Flyway, with some interesting thoughts about a migratory divide in a wader which exhibits relatively low philopatry.

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton (@GrahamFAppleton) to celebrate waders and wader research. Many of the articles are based on published papers, with the aim of making shorebird science available to a broader audience.

In amongst the tidewrack

Double-banded Plover

Tidewrack has an image problem. Who wants to see a dark line of seaweed on a beach of white sand or to smell rotting beds of kelp in enclosed bays? Shorebird conservationists may understand the feeding opportunities that are provided by fresh and older seaweed but, for tourist boards, tidewrack is something that needs to be cleared away.

It turns out that tidewrack is not just a biodiverse habitat; the mere presence of seaweed creates spaces in which waders can roost and find shelter. In a paper in the Journal of Applied Ecology, Timothy Davis & Gunnar Keppel get down to Turnstone-level, to investigate the important microhabitats within different forms of beach-cast wrack.

An Australian autumn

Readers in the northern hemisphere may well have seen wintering waders sheltering in the lee of clumps of tidewrack, as a gale blows snow and sand across a beach. At Danger Point, about half-way between Melbourne and Adelaide on the coast of Australia, conditions are somewhat different, with December and January temperatures topping 30°C, conditions in which waders must try to avoid over-heating. By April, when the Davis & Keppel study was carried out, conditions were autumnal, with cool mornings. Three of the species that might be seen on a European beach were present – Turnstone, Sanderling and Bar-tailed Godwit – but with the addition of Curlew Sandpipers and Red-necked Stints, that were about to depart for Siberia, and Double-banded Plovers that breed in New Zealand.

Which looks best – a barren beach or one strewn with seaweed?

What might waders be looking for?

Red-necked Stints

The research team was interested in the range of microclimates available on beaches with beach-cast wrack, to investigate the link between microclimates and microhabitats and how they are used  by waders. They expected to find warmer temperatures and higher humidity on aged wrack, due to advanced decomposition, and ameliorated conditions where wrack deposits provided shelter from prevailing winds. They predicted that waders would use microclimates that could reduce energy loss.

Observations

Data on temperature and humidity were collected by creating miniature Stevenson Screens – hollow white practice golf balls with iButtons inside them, attached to short bamboo canes, so as to be 10 cm above the substrate surface. If interested in conducting this sort of study, it would be sensible to read the methods section of the paper. Sample points were on bare sand, in areas with fresh wrack deposited on the sand and in beds of old tidewrack. Based on surrounding features and observations of prevailing winds, sample points were classified as sheltered or exposed.

Instantaneous scan sampling was used to classify migratory shorebird behaviour for the entire Danger Point study area (i.e., the area over which the microsensors were placed) at 15 min intervals on four days during April, as birds were preparing to migrate. Birds were classified as roosting (loafing, sleeping or preening) or as foraging on one of the three substrate types.

Variability of microclimate

As expected, there were significant differences among the three substrates (sand, fresh wrack and aged wrack) for mean, maximum and minimum temperature and absolute humidity. The temperature above the surface of aged wrack was consistently higher than elsewhere, with one notable exception: in the early mornings, when newly deposited seaweed retained some of the heat from the warmer ocean, temperatures were warmer on fresh wrack than on sand and aged wrack. For aged wrack, humidity was highest above deeper beds.

Curlew Sandpipers on the tide-edge

Bird Behaviour

Six species of wader were studied and included in ‘all waders’ counts but there were insufficient sightings of Bar-tailed Godwit, Curlew Sandpiper, Ruddy Turnstone and Sanderling for separate analyses. The main focus was upon Red-necked Stint (64.0% of observations) and Double-banded Plover (31.4%).

Double-banded Plover sheltered by tidewrack

• Roosting birds were recorded on aged wrack 16 times more frequently than sand, and three times more than on fresh wrack.
• Foraging birds were observed more than four times as often on aged wrack, when compared to fresh wrack or sand.
• However, roosting on fresh wrack was more frequent in cooler, early-morning temperatures, for all waders and for the Double-banded Plover, when considered separately. Neither temperature nor absolute humidity were significant predictors of the proportion of Red-necked Stints roosting in areas with fresh wrack.
• Foraging by waders (in general) and Double-banded Plover (in particular) was also more common within fresh deposits of wrack when temperatures were low and particularly if humidity was high. For Red-necked Stint, temperature alone predicted whether they were more likely to feed on fresh wrack, rather than aged wrack.

The importance of microhabitats

The authors show that sandy beaches with beach-cast wrack provide a complex mosaic of microclimates/habitats across differing substrates. Birds seem to exploit the microclimatic variation by using microhabitats that minimise energy expenditure, as both foraging and roosting were most likely to occur on the substrate providing the warmest, most energy-efficient conditions at the time.

There is well-documented evidence that food availability increases as seaweed decays, because wrack-beds provide homes for invertebrates, particularly developing larvae. This explains a predominance of foraging on aged wrack, which is likely to provide the best feeding opportunities. The key finding in this study is that tidewrack on sandy beaches provides important additional benefits for waders, by providing shelter and warmth. This may be particularly important when birds are fattening up for the next leg of a migratory journey. It is particularly interesting that, early in the morning, Double-banded Plovers and Red-necked Stints foraged within fresh wrack, the warmest available substrate at that time. Perhaps the effect of microclimate (temperature, humidity & shelter) might be usefully studied in other circumstances in which waders feed and roost?

The bigger picture

Turnstone, Sanderling, Purple Sandpipers and Dunlin on an Icelandic beach, having just crossed the Atlantic

When considering the role that coastal ecosystems play in the lives of waders, the main conservation focus has been on estuaries, as for instance discussed in Wader declines in the shrinking Yellow Sea. The open coastline is under threat too, squeezed by rising sea levels, battered by more frequent storms, polluted by plastic etc. In some areas, waders that use these habitats outside the breeding season are also prone to human (and canine) disturbance, as described in this Turnstone study.

Alongside more general habitat degradation, there are specific threats to tidewrack habitats along the coastline. This starts offshore, with the harvesting of stands of growing kelp, and continues when fresh tide-wrack is collected or cleared from shorelines. In 2018, it is estimated that 15,000,000 tonnes of brown algae were removed, globally. Traditionally, rotted tidewrack has been used as a fertiliser on nearby fields but most of the current output is collected when fresh and used to produce alginates, for food manufacture and biomedical purposes. Increasingly, attention is turning to use in biofuels, which has the potential to greatly increase the demand for seaweed.

Ringed Plovers in amongst seaweed on a Northumberland beach (UK)

Whilst the food, biomedical and energy industries see value in tidewrack, the tourist industry appears to see it as an untidy nuisance that spoils the image of a pristine beach. Who knows how much tidewrack is removed from beaches during daily grooming sessions or dug out of wader-rich corners before the start of the tourist season? If the image of what constitutes a welcoming beach is to be changed then perhaps there needs to be a focus on the interest that seaweed adds to a tideline walk – as visitors collect shells and look for amber, sea-coal and egg-cases. Is this naïve; have cotton buds, bottles and plastic sullied the image of tidewrack? Should we share more photographs of Sanderling chasing through seaweed-flecked spume and flocks of waders ‘chilling’ on banks of beautifully lit seaweed, instead of the barren white beaches that are used in holiday adverts?

As Timothy Davis and Gunnar Keppel conclude: “Beach-cast wrack created a complex mosaic of unique microclimates varying in space and time, which seemingly allowed shorebirds to minimize energy expenditure, by selecting the thermally most favourable habitats for roosting and foraging. Removal of beach-cast wrack therefore reduces habitat quality and increases energy expenditure and resources in shorebirds and may contribute to the observed decline of migratory shorebird species globally. Management of coastal ecosystems and shorebirds therefore needs to maintain fine-scale environmental heterogeneity.”

Paper

Fine-scale environmental heterogeneity is important for conservation management: beach-cast wrack creates important microhabitats for thermoregulation in shorebirds. Timothy John Davis & Gunnar Keppel. Journal of Applied Ecology. April 2021

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton (@GrahamFAppleton) to celebrate waders and wader research. Many of the articles are based on published papers, with the aim of making shorebird science available to a broader audience.

Waders on the coast

The UK’s coastline is of international importance because of the numbers of waders that it supports. In winter it accommodates over a third of Europe’s wintering Oystercatcher, Ringed Plover, Bar-tailed Godwit and Knot, as well as an increasing number of Sanderling.

Wintering waders on the UK’s estuaries are counted every month but those on the 17,000 km of open coast are only counted once a decade. There are good reasons for this disparity, given the much higher development pressures on estuaries and the need for regular monitoring of sites that are designated and protected. However, this does mean that we have very little information about wintering Purple Sandpipers, the vast majority of which are not covered by monthly Wetland Bird Surveys (WeBS). Over three-quarters of the UK’s Ringed Plovers are missed too, along with over half of the Sanderling and Turnstones and nearly half of the Curlew.

The last Non-estuarine Waterbird Survey took place during the winter of 2015/16, as discussed in the WaderTales blog NEWS and Oystercatchers. Jenny Gill and I undertook counts on Great Cumbrae and along stretches of the Clyde coast, in Scotland, an area we had also covered for the 2006/07 survey. We were concerned to count only 84 waders in 2015, compared to 206 in 2006. Details are in the table alongside. We hoped that 900 other people, walking along a total of 9000 km of the UK’s coastline, had been more successful!

The paper summarising NEWS results for the whole of the UK and making comparisons with previous surveys in 1997/98 and 2006/07 was not published until 2021. In the intervening period, the counts were included in two papers about wintering populations of waterbirds in Great Britain and Ireland, that were discussed in Do population estimates matter? and Ireland’s wintering waders. This blog draws heavily on a Twitter thread from the Wetland Bird Survey and the BTO’s press release. The new paper is published in Bird Study.

The big picture

In December 2015 and January 2016, NEWS III volunteers walked along amazing, long, white beaches, surveyed rocky headlands and scrambled the lengths of boulder-strewn coves. Not every kilometre of the coast could be visited but the fact that 50% coverage was achieved meant that estimates could be made of the whole coastline of the United Kingdom, together with the Isle of Man and the Channel Isles.

In terms of absolute numbers, Scotland has consistently supported the majority of the population across all non-estuarine waterbird surveys for Oystercatcher, Ringed Plover, Golden Plover, Lapwing, Purple Sandpiper, Bar-tailed Godwit, Curlew, Redshank and Turnstone. Although this is likely to reflect the relative length of the coastline for Scotland (12,714 km) compared to England (2,705 km), Wales (1,185 km) and Northern Ireland (328 km), Purple Sandpiper, Curlew, Redshank and Turnstone still appear to show a bias towards Scotland.

Using the information collected during the survey, BTO scientists were able to extrapolate estimates of the numbers of open-coast waders in the different countries of the UK and its island dependencies (see table below). The results are published in the journal Bird Study and summarised in the table below.

To evaluate the potential importance of the open coast, NEWS estimates for Great Britain in 2015/16 were compared to average population estimates. For eight species, the open coastline accounts for over 20% of the winter population. The figure of 113% for Purple Sandpipers suggests that more birds may have been present on the coasts of the UK in 2015/16 than in an average year or that the population estimate needs to be revisited. There are no Lapwings or Golden Plover in the table below, as there is no recent, reliable estimate of the national wintering population for either species. The Greenshank line is in italics as the sample size is small.

Ten species are considered in detail in the following sections. The maps were downloaded from the BTO website on 20 March 2021 (https://www.bto.org/our-science/projects/ringing/publications/online-ringing-reports). Comparisons are made between results from the Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) and the Non-estuarine Waterbirds Survey (NEWS).

Oystercatcher

26% use open coasts. 21% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 22%).

In December 2015, as we walked around the coast of Great Cumbrae in the Firth of Clyde, pairs of Oystercatchers were already staking out their territories, probably not having travelled anywhere since the previous summer or perhaps even in the last twenty years! Wintering flocks that we saw may well have included breeding birds from inland sites in Scotland, from Iceland and from Norway, together with juveniles and non-breeding sub-adults. NEWS III found that densities of coastal Oystercatchers were highest in Wales but that this is the area in which there had been the biggest declines. Breeding numbers have fallen rapidly in Scotland, as you can read in Oystercatchers: from shingle beach to roof-top.

Lapwing and Golden Plover

There was a 68% drop in Lapwing figures between 1997/98 and 2015/16 and a 59% drop in Golden Plover. NEWS and WeBS counts of Lapwing and Golden Plover are difficult to interpret because birds move readily between the coast and inland fields, in response to local conditions such as lying snow and the wetness of fields. This is further complicated in more prolonged freezing conditions, when flocks of Lapwing fly west and south in search of feeding opportunities.

Grey Plover

3% use open coasts. 71% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 41%).

The Grey Plovers that we see around the coasts of the UK in December and January breed in Siberia. It has been suggested that one of the reasons for the decline in numbers in Britain & Ireland may be related to new generations of youngsters settling in winter locations on the continental side of the North Sea – a strategy that may now work better, given that winters are not as harsh. It is interesting that losses on open coasts, which many would consider sub-optimal habitats, have been more marked than on estuaries. There’s a WaderTales blog about Grey Plovers.

Ringed Plover

82% use open coasts. 21% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 47%).

Ringed Plovers are red-listed in the UK because of the decline in winter numbers and the importance of these islands of the hiaticula race. In NEWS III, the vast majority of UK birds were found in Scotland (see earlier table) but densities were highest around the coast of England.  Colour-ring studies in Norfolk showed that breeding individuals can adopt a range of migration plans – some marked birds never left the county and others had winter homes as far away as France, Scotland and Ireland. This dispersal is pretty typical of hiaticula race Ringed Plovers that nest in western Europe and southern Scandinavia. Other races travel very long distances (Well-travelled Ringed Plovers).

Curlew

42% use open coasts. 40% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 26%).

Large numbers of Curlew arrive in the UK in the autumn, with a strong link between Finland and the estuaries of England and Wales. It is estimated that 20% of Europe’s Curlew winter within the British Isles and any change in numbers has significance for a species that is already listed as near-threatened by BirdLife International. The decline in numbers on open coasts has been greater than that seen in estuaries; it has been suggested that this may relate to the breeding origins of birds using different habitats.

Bar-tailed Godwit

15% use open coasts. 33% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 21%).

Unlike Black-tailed Godwits, which seek out the gloopiest of mud, Bar-tailed Godwits are perfectly at home on sandy shorelines. Wintering birds are of the race lapponica; these breed in Northern Scandinavia, Finland and western Russia (more here). NEWS III tells us that there has been a larger decline in numbers in coastal areas than on estuaries, perhaps related to the relative suitability of the two habitat types.

Turnstone

68% use open coasts. 29% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 29%).

Almost all of the UK’s wintering Turnstones are thought to be birds that breed in Greenland and Canada. Declines are consistent between NEWS and WeBS. A Northumberland study has shown that, as numbers have dropped, so birds have withdrawn into areas that are less disturbed by people and dogs (See Disturbed Turnstones). About three-quarters of the UK’s open-coast Turnstones are found in Scotland but they are more thinly spread here than in England.

Sanderling

69% use open coasts. 26% NEWS increase since 1997/98. (WeBS increase 8%).

As discussed in Travel advice for Sanderling, the UK is a pretty good place to spend the winter. Whether the same would have been true for previous generations of Sanderling, that were faced with much colder winters, is open to conjecture. Since 1997/98, the densities of Sanderling in Wales have increased by 712%, by 462% in Scotland and by 85% in England. How long will it be until Sanderling flocks successfully over-winter in Iceland?

Dunlin

6% use open coasts. 51% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 38%).

Three races of Dunlin can be seen in the UK (as you can read in Which wader, when and why?). Wintering Dunlin are birds of the alpina race, arriving in the UK from Siberia, NW Russia, northern Finland and northern Scandinavia in the late summer. Open coasts around the UK are estimated to accommodate fewer than 20,000 Dunlin. To put this into context, there are six estuaries that each hold more than this total during the winter period.

Purple Sandpiper

Almost all on open coasts. 19% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 34%).

The rocky coasts of the UK are home to Purple Sandpipers from the Arctic, with a suggestion that North Sea coasts south of Aberdeen mainly play host to birds from Spitsbergen and northern Scandinavia, with Greenland and Canadian birds more likely to be found further north and on the Atlantic coast. Coastal numbers have declined by 19%. The Highland Ringing Group has shown that the number of young Purple Sandpipers has been declining on the Moray Firth, suggesting a period of relatively poor breeding success for birds migrating from the northwest.

Redshank

22% use open coasts. 42% NEWS decline since 1997/98. (WeBS decline 21%).

Perhaps surprisingly, few Redshank cross the North Sea to spend the winter in the UK. Winter flocks are largely made up of home-grown birds and migrants from Iceland. The recent decline in Redshank numbers is thought to be a reflection of changing numbers of British and Irish breeders, although there are no monitoring schemes to provide information about Icelandic birds. Since 1997/98, the number of Redshank on open coasts has dropped by 42% but almost all of the losses have occurred in the period since 2007/08 (37% decline between 2007/08 and 2015/16). Redshank is currently amber-listed in the UK, reflecting falling breeding numbers, but ‘promotion’ to the red list cannot be far off. There is a WaderTales blog about the rapid decline in the number of Redshank breeding on salt-marshes: Redshank – the warden of the marshes.

Summary

The Non-estuarine Waterbird Survey 2015/16 revealed that there have been major declines in abundance of four species since NEWS II in 2007/08, only eight years previously: Lapwing (down 57%), Curlew (down 31%), Redshank (down 37%) and Turnstone (down 32%). Lapwing and Curlew are both red-listed in the UK. The only species to increase is Sanderling (up by 79%).

Given the magnitude of the changes revealed in NEWS III, it is unfortunate that this labour-intensive survey can only be carried out every eight to ten years. Ideally, it might be possible to survey at least a sample of sites on an annual basis. It is certainly to be hoped that funding can be found for NEWS IV within the next few years, and that volunteers will once more be prepared to count waterbirds on beautiful, if exposed, stretches of coastline.

The results of NEWS III are published in a paper in Bird Study:

Wader populations on the United Kingdom’s open coast: results of the 2015/16 Non-Estuarine Waterbird Survey (NEWS-III) and a review of population trends. Humphreys, E.M., Austin, G.E., Frost, T.M., Mellan, H.J., Boersch-Supan, P., Burton, N.H.K. and Balmer, D.E.

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton (@GrahamFAppleton) to celebrate waders and wader research. Many of the articles are based on published papers, with the aim of making shorebird science available to a broader audience.

Sixty years of Wash waders

Weighing a Turnstone

The Wash Wader Ringing Group (WWRG)** started with a bang on 18 August 1959, when the team made a catch of 1,132 birds in a Wildfowl Trust rocket-net at Terrington, in Norfolk. Over the years, cannon have replaced rockets, catches have become generally smaller and the scientific priorities have been refined, but the Group continues to focus upon discovering more about the waders that use the Wash. This blog attempts to summarises what has been learnt about the waders that rely upon the Wash, the vast muddy estuary that lies between Lincolnshire and Norfolk, on the east coast of England.

** The Wash Wader Ringing Group changed its name to the Wash Wader Research Group in 2022, reflecting the broader range of studies that have evolved over the years.

Wee quiz: What’s the best match between these Wash waders and the countries that they are quite likely to have come from? Answers at the end of the blog:

• Species: Bar-tailed Godwit, Black-tailed Godwit, Curlew, Oystercatcher, Sanderling & Turnstone
• Countries: Canada, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway & Russia

Sixty years ago, the first goal was to understand where the vast flocks of waders that visit the Wash came from – a task that would provide great insights into the way that the whole East Atlantic Flyway works. In this time, over 300,000 birds have been caught and ringed on the Wash, as you can see in the table below. Equally importantly, hundreds of bird-ringers from across the UK and scores of visitors from around the world have joined WWRG teams, in order to learn more about the study of shorebirds. Further international collaboration has been fostered through overseas visits by WWRG members and emigration of some key personnel. The impact of the Group is truly global, as you can read in the WWRG report for 2014/2015.

A total of 307,226 birds is impressive, especially when some of the species totals are compared to the national totals of the BTO Ringing Scheme for the whole of Britain & Ireland since 1909. WWRG is responsible for over 40% of the Grey Plover, Knot, Sanderling and Bar-tailed Godwit, with Grey Plover topping the list at nearly 60%. These are terrific achievements for a group of volunteers. I don’t have the figures but I reckon that Nigel Clark has been responsible for the largest number of catches.

Firing box connected to 4 cannon-nets

In the early days, rocket nets were borrowed from the Wildfowl Trust for an annual summer week of catches, but the development of cannon-nets gave opportunities for all-year ringing. The intensity of the Group’s activities grew in the 1970s, when there was a threat to build a freshwater reservoir on the mudflats. For a couple of years, Clive Minton (founder and leader) persuaded us to visit fortnightly, so that we could get better data on weight-gain and turn-over, using a mixture of cannon-netting and mist-netting. Everything we knew was published by the Group as The Wash Feasibility Study in 1975. These days, the Group gets together about ten times a year for catching and colour-ring-reading sessions.

By catching and ringing large numbers of the key species that visit the Wash, the Group was able to generate maps showing what are now well-known patterns of migration (see Which wader, when and why?). Early on in the Group’s history, there was a focus on nine species, with Black-tailed Godwit added as a tenth when numbers increased. Each of these species has its own section below. The maps were prepared for the Wash Wader Ringing Group 2016/2017 Report by Ryan Burrell, using data stored within the BTO archives. Blue dots represent WWRG-ringed birds that have been found abroad. Red triangles represent foreign-ringed birds caught on the Wash. The base maps used are by courtesy of Natural Earth (www.naturalearthdata.com).

Oystercatcher

The map alongside clearly demonstrates the strong link between the Wash and Norway. Other interesting things that have been discovered about Oystercatchers:

• They live a long time. An Oystercatcher that we caught at Friskney on 30 July 1976 broke the longevity record for a BTO-ringed wader when it was shot in France on 4 April 2017 (41 years 1 month and 5 days). It was ringed as an adult so we don’t know the exact age – but it must have been at least 43 years old. There’s a WaderTales blog with a list of longevity records for BTO-ringed waders.
• When life gets tough, Oystercatchers fail to complete their autumn moult, retaining some of their outer primaries for an extra year. The ability to complete moult and annual survival rates are both affected by cockle and mussel supplies on the Wash. There’s more about this in two papers in Biological Conservation and the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Grey Plover

In the early days of the WWRG, Grey Plovers occurred in much smaller numbers than they do now. Writing in an article about the first 40 years of the Group, Clive Minton told the story of the first catch of 100, made in 1963, that was celebrated with three bottles of champagne provided by the late Hugh Boyd, delivering on an incentive that he had promised.

• Over half of the Grey Plover that have been ringed in Britain & Ireland since 1909 have been ringed by WWRG since 1959 (58.9%)
• All of the Grey Plover using the Wash breed in Siberia. Some birds spend the winter on the Wash but there are autumn moulting flocks of birds that will go on to winter in other parts of Britain & Ireland, and spring and autumn passage of birds that travel as far south as West Africa.
• Grey Plover are late to leave the Wash, with the last departures not occurring until the start of June. Unsurprisingly, they are some of the last waders to return at the end of summer, which puts pressure on birds to finish moult before the short, cold days of winter. Some adults fail to complete primary moult, especially if food supplies are low. There is more about Grey Plover moult in this WaderTales blog.

Knot

First-winter Knot (subterminal bands on wing coverts and, as yet, unmoulted juvenile fethers on upper-parts)

Knot (or Red Knot) are truly international waders, as is shown in this map of movements of islandica  (and a few canutus) birds  to and from the Wash. Several WWRG members have been heavily involved in efforts to understand the decline in numbers of the rufa subspecies in Delaware Bay (on the North American eastern seaboard) and Clive Minton has been at the heart of efforts to explain the sudden drop in survival of piersmai and rogersi adults that winter in Australia and migrate to Arctic Russia via the Yellow Sea (see Wader declines in the shrinking Yellow Sea).

• We are still learning about Knot migration. The cluster of reports of WWRG-ringed birds in Northern Norway looks odd on this map projection but it turns out that this is a well-used stopping-off point for islandica Knot heading for northern Greenland and NE Canada. This route was first confirmed in 1985, when a joint Durham University and Tromsø University expedition caught 18 Wash-ringed birds in a total catch of 1703 birds.
• The dot in Siberia looks odd but isn’t. This will be a bird of the canutus race, small numbers of which pause on the Wash in autumn and spring, on their way between the Russian Arctic and west Africa.

• 

  Setting cannon-nets

  Many birdwatchers visit the Wash in autumn and winter to see the swirling Knot flocks at Snettisham and Holme. If high tide is at first light, Knot and other waders sometimes roost on Heacham Beach, giving the occasional opportunity to make a significant catch. The most recent of these, on 11 February in 2012, included 2757 Knot, 77 of which were already wearing rings.

• Knot numbers on the Wash are highest in autumn. After moulting, many birds fly west. Colour-flagging by WWRG is designed better to understand these movements.
• The most recent analysis of wader populations in Great Britain showed that there was a drop of nearly 20% in wintering Knot numbers (from 320k to 260k) in less than a decade (see Do population estimates matter?). Regular catches on the Wash will help produce estimates of annual survival rates and age ratios of the islandica subspecies.

Sanderling

The biggest catches of Sanderling are generally in the summer, when the Wash is a meeting point for birds from Greenland and Siberia. July can sometimes see catches of 200 or more birds. Traditionally, a Sanderling catch was the curtain-raiser at the start of Wash Week, an opportunity for the whole team to make one catch before splitting into ‘Terrington’ and ‘Lincolnshire’ teams for the rest of the main summer trip.

• Wintering Sanderling on the Wash are thought to be exclusively of the race that heads northwest in the spring, to Greenland via Iceland.
• Late summer and spring see the addition of birds passing through on their way from/to Siberia and extra birds from Greenlandic breeding areas.
• I well remember the first time we caught a Sanderling (on 26 July 1975) wearing an Italian ring (caught in Italy 9 May 1975). Thanks to Jeroen Reneerkens (whose work is covered in this blog) I now understand that this is probably a bird that migrates from Namibia to Greenland in spring, via the Mediterranean. It will have been on its way back to Namibia when caught in July.

Dunlin

Sam Franks, looking for the buffy tips on inner coverts, which distinguish first-year birds from adults

Nearly half of the waders caught by WWRG have been Dunlin – a total of 140,168 up until the end of 2018. There were really big flocks of Dunlin in the 1970s but numbers have dropped over the years, with peak counts now half what they were, according to WeBS data.

• We caught over 3,500 Dunlin in one week in 1976 but the annual total has exceeded 1,000 in only four of the last ten years. Partly, this reflects a change in behaviour in the summertime, with fewer waders roosting on fields and hence less catchable.
• Three races of Dunlin visit the UK. Our winter birds are alpina, from Siberia, NW Russia and northern Scandinavia. A lot of July birds are schinzii, breeding in the UK and as far north as Greenland, and we occasionally try to convince ourselves that we have caught an arctica from northern Greenland.
• Data collected for the WeBS survey suggest that national winter totals have dropped by over 40% in 25 years. This could perhaps partly be explained by a redistribution of alpina, with new generations of young birds settling in wintering areas on the other side of the North Sea. Warmer winters may well make this a more practical proposition than in the 1970s. There’s more about this in this paper.

Black-tailed Godwit

Newly ringed Black-tailed Godwit, caught in a mist-net at night.

Black-tailed Godwits became a priority species in 1995, when Jennifer Gill (University of East Anglia) started a project to study the movements of individuals, using colour-rings. Nearly 25 years later, the WWRG-ringed Black-tailed Godwits have contributed data to numerous papers, largely focusing upon migration.

• The Wash is a hugely important area for moulting islandica Black-tailed Godwits. Some birds stay in East Anglia for the winter but others move south and west within the UK, west to Ireland and south to France, Portugal and Spain.
• There are several blogs about Black-tailed Godwits in this WaderTales contents list.

Bar-tailed Godwit

One of the key things that was learned from the sudden decline in annual survival rates in a range of species that use the Yellow Sea (as mentioned above) is a need for regular monitoring of marked birds. The WWRG’s Scientific Committee set up colour-flagging projects for Bar-tailed Godwit, Curlew and Grey Plover, in order to increase the reliability of estimates of annual survival for three species that the Group does not catch in sufficient numbers to generate good retrap histories. Birdwatchers can help by reporting colour-marked birds here.

• In Bar-tailed Godwits: Migration & Survival there is a comparison of the data generated by a catch of 505 Bar-tailed Godwits in 1976 with the information that has been generated recently, using colour-flags.
• Bar-tailed Godwits are long-lived birds. A WWRG bird holds the current record for a BTO-ringed Bar-tailed Godwit: 33 years and 11 months between ringing in 1978 and recapture in 2008. BTO longevity records are discussed in this WaderTales blog.
• Colour-ring reading is now a significant element of Group activities, as described by Rob Pell in the WWRG Report for 2016/2017.

Curlew

Back in the 1970s, Curlew were still hunted on the Wash (paté made from autumn-shot birds was reported to be very tasty). Shooting stopped in Great Britain in 1981, when the maximum winter count on the Wash had dropped to about 3,000 birds, and by 2003/04 the maximum winter count was 15,336. Since then, numbers have declined, in line with national and international trends.

• A large number of Curlew on the Wash in winter are from Finland and surrounding countries. Surprisingly few are of UK origin.
• Birds wearing WWRG leg-flags have been observed breeding in the Brecks (Norfolk/Suffolk).
• The Curlew is internationally designated as ‘Near Threatened’. Is this really true when we can still see a field with 1000 roosting Curlew in Norfolk? Answers here.

Redshank

The latest population estimates suggest that Great Britain has lost 26,000 wintering Redshank in less than a decade, representing a drop of 20%. Perhaps WWRG data can be used to help to explain these declines? Here are some of the things we know:

• The Redshank on The Wash in the winter are mainly a mixture of birds from around the Wash, across the UK and from Iceland.
• In cold winters, Redshank wintering on the Wash die in large numbers. After a period of severe weather in 1991, nearly 3,000 wader corpses were collected from along the tide-line, about 50% of which were Redshank. The winter WeBS counts for Redshank dropped by 50% after this mortality event but have recovered somewhat since then.
• An analysis of nearly 1,000 dead Redshank showed that about two-thirds were of Icelandic origin. There was a tendency for smaller birds to be more susceptible to cold weather mortality than larger birds of the same species (More information in this paper by Jacquie Clark)

Turnstone

Winter Turnstone are birds that will head for Greenland and NE Canada in the spring but recoveries of birds in Finland and other Scandinavian countries indicate a passage of continental birds. African recoveries of WWRG-ringed birds probably include birds from Canada/Greenland and Finland/Scandinavia.

• Turnstone wearing US Fish & Wildlife Service rings are occasionally caught on the Wash. Some of these rings were put on by Guy Morrison and his colleagues in Alert, Ellesmere Island, Canada. Guy was an early member of WWRG. It’s a small world!
• The first Wash Turnstone were colour-ringed in 1999, as part of a study to understand why birds were feeding on the docks at Sutton Bridge. There is a WaderTales blog about the resulting paper by Jen Smart and Jennifer Gill. Colour-ringing continues, to measure annual survival rates.
• Turnstone have a reputation for eating almost anything (including dog excrement and a human corpse) so do not be surprised if you see a colour-ringed bird scavenging for chips on the Hunstanton sea-front.

A few more highlights

Ringed Plover: this is not one of the ten key study species but 1,432 have been ringed between 1959 and 2018. Some birds are local breeders that hardly move anywhere but other birds link the Wash with Greenland, northern Norway, Morocco and Senegal.

Greenshank: The Group supports a colour-ringing project that was initiated by Pete Potts, in Hampshire. More information here.

Spotted Redshank: During the period 1959 to 2018, WWRG ringed a total of 85 Spotted Redshank, representing over 20% of the total ringed in Britain and Ireland since 1909. Amazingly, sixty of these birds were ringed on the same day – 27 July 1975. There is a blog about this catch and the recent decline in the number of Spotted Redshank visiting the UK. Fewer Spotted Redshanks.

Ruff: Until its closure, WWRG members spent many a smelly night at Wisbech Sewage Farm. This was a great place to catch Ruff, Curlew Sandpipers, Green Sandpipers etc. in mist-nets. Group members wrote a paper about Ruff moult and migration.

Rares: Occasionally there are surprises! WWRG has caught one each of Stone Curlew, Pectoral Sandpiper, Broad-billed Sandpiper and Terek Sandpiper. The last bird features in this WWRG blog.

What do we know now?

Migration studies have revealed the importance of the Wash to half a million or more waders each year – birds that spend the whole winter, others that refuel in the spring and vast numbers that rely on the food supplies in the mud to provide the energy for the post-breeding moult. There’s a selection of papers that have included WWRG data here, on the Group’s web-site.

The Group still aims to maintain its general ringing programme, so that a representative sample of the key species carry rings. Colour-ringing projects aim to provide survival estimates for Curlew, Bar-tailed Godwit, Grey Plover and Turnstone, with Greenshank and Black-tailed Godwit colour-rings contributing to migration studies. Birdwatchers who visit the Wash can help by reporting colour-marked birds here, on the WWRG web-site.

WWRG data have been used to help inform decisions about the future of the Wash but the threats keep coming. Studies of migration and seasonal turn-over in numbers contributed hugely to decisions to provide national and international protection to the area and to fend off the 1970s plan to build a freshwater reservoir on the rich mudflats. The information that has been generated by many generations of volunteers over a period of sixty years has been used to manage the level of shellfish exploitation, to inform decisions about wind turbine locations and to manage activities that can cause disturbance.

The Wash Wader Ringing Group is very keen for its data to be used – and not just for impact assessment studies. Click here to learn more.

Diamond Jubilee

Phil Ireland releasing a Curlew

Over one thousand people are estimated to have contributed to sixty years of the Wash Wader Ringing Group’s activities. We have lived in barns, rolled cars, dug tens of thousands of holes, carried nets for miles, made important catches, had depressing failures, got frostbite, been threatened by surge tides and made friends for life.

In the whole of this period, there have been only two leaders of the Group – Clive Minton* (1959-1981) and Phil Ireland (1981-present). Bird ringers, wader biologists and millions of waders owe them both a huge debt of gratitude.

You can read more about the history of WWRG on the Group’s website:

• Blog (18 August 2019)
• Article on history (Ruth Walker)
• Memories (Clive Minton*)
• Memories (Daphne Watson)

*Clive Minton died in a car crash a few months after this blog was written. Friends and colleagues have shared some wonderful memories on the IWSG website.

Photo at the top of this blog is by Cathy Ryden. Many thanks to her and to other photographers.

Wee quiz:

• Bar-tailed Godwit – Russia
• Black-tailed Godwit – Iceland
• Curlew – Finland
• Oystercatcher – Norway
• Sanderling – Greenland
• Turnstone – Canada

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Graham (@grahamfappleton) has studied waders for over 40 years and is currently involved in wader research in the UK and in Iceland.  He was Director of Communications at The British Trust for Ornithology until 2013 and is now a freelance writer and broadcaster.

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Ireland’s wintering waders

There’s still space for a few Knot

The island of Ireland is a great refuge for wintering waders, washed as it is by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. It’s just a quick hop across the Atlantic from Iceland for Black-tailed Godwits, Golden Plovers, Redshanks and Oystercatchers. For birds travelling from Siberia, such as Dunlin and Grey Plovers, it’s a longer journey but one that’s well worth making.

If Ireland is such a great destination for shorebirds, why do the latest population estimates reveal a decline of nearly 20% in wader numbers in just five years?

This blog summarises the wader information, published in Estimates of waterbird numbers wintering in Ireland, 2011/12 – 2015/16 in Irish Birds. The totals in the report are split into counts for the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland but, given that waders don’t recognise borders, most of the comments in this blog relate to the whole of Ireland. The results for 2011-16 have been compared to the equivalent figures for 2006-11 and set in the context of the totals of wintering waders throughout the East Atlantic flyway, as combined by Wetlands International. The Irish data were collected by the amazing volunteers who make monthly, winter counts for I-WeBS (BirdWatch Ireland & National Parks & Wildlife Service) and WeBS (BTO/RSPB/JNCC in Northern Ireland).

Headline figures

Fifteen species are considered in this report. The most numerous are Lapwing and Golden Plover, which account for an estimate over 170,000 individuals between them, whilst the smallest contributions are made by Purple Sandpiper (662) and Greenshank (1317). In total, the average estimated number of waders in the winters during the period 2011-16 is 429,170 birds but it should be noted that this total excludes two widespread and common species – Woodcock and Snipe – as well as the enigmatic Jack Snipe. To update previous estimates for these three species, which were last made using distribution and abundance data collected during Bird Atlas 2007-11 fieldwork, it would be necessary to run a special inland survey. There is also some question about Lapwing and Golden Plover numbers, simply because so many of these birds are found in areas that are not covered by monthly waterbird counts.

Biggest changes

The Irish Sanderling population has increased by 13.2% in five years

The combined average winter maximum count of the 15 wader species examined in the report declined by 102,310 birds (19%) in the five-year period between 2006-11 and 2011-16. This is extremely worrying. If Lapwing and Golden Plover are excluded from consideration, as there is uncertainty about the completeness of counts, there are five species that are of particular concern; Knot numbers dropped by more than 40% and Oystercatcher, Dunlin, Redshank and Turnstone numbers by more than 20%. The Purple Sandpiper population estimate dropped by over 30% but relatively small numbers of this species are encountered around the rocky coast of Ireland. The only species to show increases were Sanderling, Bar-tailed Godwit, Black-tailed Godwit and Greenshank.

In a previous WaderTales blog, there is detailed information about population estimates for Great Britain: Do population estimates matter? In Great Britain there were similar rates of decline for Redshank and Turnstone (measured over an eight-year, rather than five-year period) but much smaller falls for Knot, Oystercatcher and Dunlin. The possible causes of the changes in Ireland are discussed in the paper in Irish Birds. They include flyway-scale declines (e.g. Knot and Curlew) and the possibility that more birds from the east are now wintering on the coasts of mainland Europe (e.g. Dunlin and Grey Plover).

European context

The table alongside gives an indication of the relative importance of Ireland, Great Britain and, together, the British Isles to the birds that use the East Atlantic flyway during the winter period. The three columns show the percentage of each species found in each of the three regions. Summarised international counts, as used in the paper, were kindly provided by Wetlands International. In the case of four species, Ireland is host to a significant proportion of the Icelandic breeding population (Oystercatcher, Golden Plover, Black-tailed Godwit and Redshank). There’s a WaderTales blog about the close link between Ireland & Iceland. Another blog – Which, wader, when & why? – summarises migration to, from and through Britain & Ireland.

Notes: As mentioned earlier, there are questions about the precision of estimates for Lapwing and Golden Plover, although the population trends are reliable. The Ringed Plover percentage seems high (98% for British Isles) but this may well reflect the fact that the Non-estuarine Waterbird Survey has uncovered significant numbers of the species on the open shores of Great Britain. These extra birds are included in the new totals for GB but not in the flyway total. The percentages for Black-tailed Godwit seem low, as discussed further down.

Ireland is particularly important for Golden Plover, Ringed Plover, Bar-tailed Godwit and Black-tailed Godwit, as well as for the Icelandic subspecies of Redshank. Greenshank is excluded because the percentages are below 1% of the flyway population for Ireland and for Great Britain.

11% of Bar-tailed Godwit on the East Atlantic Flyway spend the winter in Ireland

Although there are important populations of breeding waders in Ireland, the shores and wet fields of the island really come into their own during July and August, when the first ‘winter’ waders arrive, and they only become quiet again in April and May, when the last birds head north and east to nest. A successful breeder is likely only to be away for four or five months, meaning that these waders will spend by far the largest part of the year in Ireland. The island is even more important for immature birds. Young Oystercatchers that arrive from Iceland, Scotland or perhaps Norway when just a few months old are likely to spend the next 30 months in Ireland before making their first trip north. There is a WaderTales migration blog about the Oystercatchers that fly from Iceland: Migratory decisions for Icelandic Oystercatchers.

Curlew in the Republic

Curlew numbers in the Republic of Ireland illustrate the relative importance of the country for breeding and non-breeding populations. The winter population estimate for Curlew in the Republic is 28,300 but the most recent survey conducted by BirdWatch Ireland and NPWS, as summarised in the WaderTales blog Ireland’s Curlew Crisis, reveals that the number of breeding birds has crashed to just 138 pairs. Accounting for young Irish birds that have not started to breed, and even if we assume that all Irish birds stay in the country for the winter, then the total number of home-grown Curlew seen in non-breeding flocks is at most about 400. This means that every winter flock of 70 Curlew will contain an average of just one Irish bird. Far more deliver their curl-ew calls with a Scottish, Finnish or Swedish ‘accent’. The map below shows the migration pattern for Curlew ringed in or found in Britain & Ireland.

Black-tailed Godwit

In the table above, it looks as if 18% of Iceland’s Black-tailed Godwits spend the winter in Ireland. This is probably an underestimate of the importance of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to the species. The flyway total for Black-tailed Godwit is given as between 98,000 and 134,000 in the Irish Birds paper and the percentage figure is based on 110,000. These three figures are almost certainly too high, as they build upon country-based estimates that have subsequently been revised. The true figure is likely to be around 60,000 to 65,000 (J. Gill pers. comm.), which would suggest that the maximum winter count in Ireland of 19,800 represents at least 30% of the islandica Black-tailed Godwits. Add in extra birds that moult in Ireland in the autumn, before moving further south to countries such as Portugal, and other birds that spend spring months on the island, and Ireland becomes even more important for Black-tailed Godwits!

Most birdwatchers might associate flocks of waders with estuaries but Black-tailed Godwit is an excellent example of a species that also relies on inland fields, either close to estuaries or along river valleys. Whilst undertaking PhD research on Black-tailed Godwits in south-east Ireland, Daniel Hayhow showed that there is insufficient time to find enough estuarine food during the mid-winter tidal cycles, with birds topping up their resources on grassland. You can read more about the energetic consequences of choosing to winter in eastern England, Portugal and Ireland in this blog: Overtaking on migration. Site designation and planning decisions need to take account of the grassland feeding requirements of Black-tailed Godwits and other waders that do not spend all of their time on estuaries, particularly Curlew.

Conservation implications

Some of the issues facing waders may be related to threats that species face in the breeding grounds. However, it may be easier to introduce measures that provide better protection and feeding opportunities in the wintering area, as ways of maintaining populations through the non-breeding season, than it is to deal with problems in the High Arctic. (Although we can all help by reducing carbon emissions, in order to minimise global warming, of course).

Reading the report, I was reminded of the need to consider a range of conservation issues:

• Care needs to be taken when considering shoreline developments. These can directly remove habitat or squeeze the width of the intertidal zone.
• Increased harvesting of shellfish can affect species such as Oystercatcher and Knot and brings risks of introducing alien species and diseases.
• In the drive to cut carbon emissions, tidal, wave and wind power developments need to be sited in appropriate places.
• Off-shore harvesting of growing kelp beds has been suggested, as a way of producing fertiliser and biofuels. This process could reduce protection for beaches and change the availability of resources for species such as Turnstone and Sanderling.
• Grassland areas need to be considered (and not just estuaries) when planning protection for species such as Curlew and Black-tailed Godwit.

Paper

Estimates of waterbird numbers wintering in Ireland, 2011/12 – 2015/16. Brian Burke, Lesley J. Lewis, Niamh Fitzgerald, Teresa Frost, Graham Austin, and T. David Tierney. Irish Birds No. 41, 1-12.

There is a complementary paper in British Birds, covering Great Britain. The wader information is summarised in this blog: Do population estimates matter?

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton, to celebrate waders and wader research.  Many of the articles are based on previously published papers, with the aim of making wader science available to a broader audience.

@grahamfappleton

Do population estimates matter?

How many waders spend the winter in Great Britain? The answer is provided within an article in British Birds entitled Population estimates of wintering waterbirds in Great Britain. It includes all the wader species from Little Stint to Curlew that are covered by the Wetland Bird Survey  This survey is based on monthly counts that take place at about 2000 wetlands and coastal sites. The main aim is to monitor the rise and falls in numbers over time.

Please note that Northern Ireland WeBS figures are included in a separate blog covering the island of Ireland that was published in Irish Birds.

Why do we need to know the total number of birds in Great Britain?

• If we count the number of Curlew and we have a figure for the European population then we know that Great Britain is responsible for nearly 20% of Europe’s Curlew each winter, thereby strengthening the case for national conservation action;
• If we have a national figure, then we know that a flock of 2000 Black-tailed Godwit represents (as it turns out) over 5% of the British total, which is a useful criterion when assessing the conservation importance of individual sites;
• Population totals help to put annual percentage changes into context;
• And simply because people ask questions such as “how many Greenshank are there in the country during the winter?”

So, here’s the bottom line. In their 2019 review of waterbird numbers in British Birds, a team from BTO, WWT, JNCC & RSPB reveal that an estimated total of 4.9 million waders spend the winter in Great Britain. For several species, GB holds a third or more of the East Atlantic Flyway population!

Making the counts

The population estimates owe a lot to those who undertake monthly Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) counts on estuaries, lakes and waterways, during the winter months, year in and year out. Counts from the period 2012/13 to 2016/17 are used in the population estimates that form the basis for the 2019 review. WeBS data have many other uses, as you can read here: Wetland Bird Survey: working for waders.

For species of wader that also make use of the open coast, the Non-estuarine Waterbirds Survey of 2015/16 (or NEWS III) provided additional data, updating the NEWS II figures from 2006/07.

The vast majority of our wintering Purple Sandpipers are found on open beaches and rocky shores, as well as large numbers of Turnstone, Ringed Plover and Sanderling, together with significant numbers of Oystercatcher, Curlew and Redshank. There’s more about NEWS in this slightly dated blog: NEWS and Oystercatchers for Christmas.

The last assessment of winter wader populations was made by the Avian Population Estimates Panel and published in British Birds in 2013 as Population estimates of birds in Great Britain and the United Kingdom (APEP3). In here, estimates for waders were largely based on WeBS data for the period 2004-09 and NEWS II. The new assessment is presented as Population estimates of wintering waterbirds in Great Britain and also published in British Birds. It uses WeBS information for the period 2012-17 and NEWS III data. Effectively, there is an 8-year or 9-year difference between the two sets of figures.

The biggest losers

Great Britain is extremely important in the context of the East Atlantic Flyway, as is obvious from the fact that the area holds nearly five million waders. The WeBs counts already monitor the ups and downs on an annual basis but this review provides an opportunity to turn the percentages into actual numbers. It is concerning that, over a period representing less than a decade, the average maximum winter count for six of the species that were surveyed dropped by a total of over 150,000. These big losers were Knot, Oystercatcher, Redshank, Curlew, Grey Plover and Dunlin, ordered by number of birds lost, with Knot seeing the biggest absolute decline.

In preparing the new estimates for the British Birds paper, an opportunity was taken to refine the way that populations are calculated, based on Use of environmental stratification to derive non-breeding population estimates of dispersed waterbirds in Great Britain, by Verónica Méndez et al. The new methodology explains some of the differences between percentage changes reported by WeBS and the percentage changes obtained by comparing the latest population estimates to those in APEP3.

The Knot estimate dropped from 320,000 to 260,000. This decline is bigger than might be expected from the counts that take place at sites covered by WeBS, being larger than the ten-year decline of 14% reported in the last WeBS report. Knot are mobile species within the North Sea and Atlantic Coast wintering area and it is possible that British losses may be explained, at least to some extent, by redistribution.

The drop in Oystercatcher numbers from 320,000 to 290,000 appears to be less than 10%, compared to a ten-year decline of 12% on WeBS. Improved analysis of NEWS data helped to add some more birds to the open-coast estimate so the 10% fall may underestimate the seriousness of the Oystercatcher situation. The 25-year Oystercatcher decline on WeBS is 26%, which is not surprising if you look at the changes to breeding numbers in Scotland, where most British birds are to be found. There’s more about this in: From shingle beach to roof-top.

The Redshank decline of 26,000 is higher than would be predicted from WeBS figures, suggesting a drop of over 20% since APEP3, rather than ‘just’ 15% for the ten-year WeBS figure. This is a species that also features strongly in the Non-estuarine Waterbird Survey and that might explain the difference. Wintering Redshank are mostly of British and Icelandic origin, with the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) suggesting a ten-year decline of 24% in our British breeding birds.

The Curlew is now globally recognised as near-threatened. The latest winter estimate is 120,000, down from 140,000 in APEP3. The new total represents between 14% and 19% of the European population, which means that we have a particular responsibility for this much-loved species. Only the Netherlands holds more wintering Curlew than Great Britain. Is the Curlew really nearly-threatened? is one of several blogs about Curlew in the WaderTales catalogue at www.wadertales.wordpress/about .

It has been suggested that the long-term declines of Grey Plover and Dunlin  may be associated with short-stopping, with new generations of both species wintering closer to their eastern breeding grounds than used to be the case. WeBS results indicate a 31% drop in Grey Plover and a 42% drop in Dunlin, over the last 25 years. There was a loss of 10,000 for both species between APEP3 and the new review, representing declines of 23% and 3% respectively.

The biggest winners

There are several big winners in the period between APEP3 (2004-09) and the new review (2012-16), although, in some cases, not all is as it seems.

The Avocet has seen further dramatic gains. with the estimated wintering population rising to 8,700. The increase is not quite as big as might have been expected, based on the 43% rise seen in ten years of WeBS counts, but it is still a dramatic continuation of a 40-year trend.

The numbers of Bar-tailed Godwit and Ringed Plover are both substantially higher but at least a proportion of each of these changes is linked to the better coverage and more sophisticated sampling methods that were discussed earlier. Bar-tailed Godwit increases may also reflect redistribution around the North Sea.

One of the consequences of improved statistical techniques, as used this time around, is the apparent decline in the estimated population of Black-tailed Godwit. The new figure of 39,000 is 4,000 smaller than in APEP3, despite the fact that the WeBS graph clearly shows an increase. Interpolation using WeBs figures suggests that the earlier population estimate should have been 31,000, rather than 43,000.

Sanderling from Greenland spend the non-breeding season as far south as South Africa but  increasing numbers of birds are wintering in Great Britain and Ireland (25% increase in 8 years in GB and 13% in 5 years in Ireland). Interestingly, survival rates of English birds are just as high as those in Namibia. The losers are birds that spend the non-breeding season in equatorial Africa, as you can read here; Travel advice for Sanderling.

There are other winners too, as you can read in the paper. At the start, I posed the question “how many Greenshank are there in the country during the winter?”.  The answer is 810, representing an increase of 200 since APEP3. The vast majority of these wintering Greenshank are birds from the population that breeds in northern Scotland, as you can read in Migration of Scottish Greenshank.

Game species

The estimates for the three wintering waders that are still on the UK quarry list have not changed since APEP3 (published in 2011) as there are no new data available.

Golden Plover: The winter estimate remains as 400,000, as there has been no comprehensive, winter survey since 2006/7. Large numbers of Golden Plover arrive from Scandinavia, Europe and Iceland in the late summer, joining the British birds that choose not to migrate south or west. The GB breeding population is probably less than 50,000 pairs. Most breed in Scotland which has seen a breeding decline of 5% in the period 1995 to 2018 (BBS). Golden Plover is still ‘green listed’.

Snipe (Common): The winter estimate remains as 1,100,000 – a figure that was acknowledged in APEP3 as being less reliable than that of most species. At the same time, the GB breeding population was estimated as 76,000 pairs, indicating at least a 4:1 ratio of foreign to British birds, and that does not take account of the number of British birds that migrate south and west. Snipe are ‘amber listed’ but BBS suggests a recent increase of 26% (1995-2018). There is a WaderTales blog about  Snipe and Jack Snipe.

Woodcock: The winter estimate remains as 1,400,000 – another figure that is not considered to be particularly precise, with much variation between years. The diminishing breeding population is dwarfed by winter numbers, as you can read in this WaderTales blog, with increased attention being given to ways to afford better protection of red-listed, British-breeding birds.

Many of the Golden Plover, Snipe and Woodcock that spend winter in Great Britain are birds that breed in Fennoscandia (Finland, Sweden & Norway). The latest assessment of breeding numbers shows that populations of all three species are stable. See Fennoscandian Wader Factory.

January counts

The paper in British Birds also includes a table of January population estimates, to provide data that are comparable to mid-winter counts in other countries. These figures are used in waterbird monitoring for the International Waterbird Census for the African Eurasian Flyway. The main table (and figures mentioned above) are average maximum winter counts (in the period September to March). Black-tailed Godwit is one species that illustrates the difference, with a mean of 30,000 in January and a mean peak count of 39,000. Having moulted in Great Britain, some Black-tailed Godwits move south to France and Portugal in late autumn, returning as early as February. January counts are therefore substantially lower than early-winter and late-winter counts. There is more about the migratory strategy employed by Black-tailed Godwits that winter in southern Europe in Overtaking on Migration.

Looking forward

The authors have done a tremendous job. They have refined the way that estimates are calculated, they have combined the results from WeBS and NEWS III, and they have delivered population estimates for 25 wader species and many more other species of waterbirds. These population estimates will be used in conservation decision-making until the next set of numbers becomes available. Meanwhile, thousands of birdwatchers will count the birds on their WeBS patches in each winter month, every year. Without them, this paper could not have been written.

Before the next assessment, there will need to be another NEWS survey, to check up on species that use rocky and sandy shore birds, such as Purple Sandpipers, Turnstone and Curlew. Hopefully, there will also be a dedicated survey to assess Lapwing and Golden Plover numbers and perhaps we might find a way to refine the old estimates for Woodcock, Snipe and Jack Snipe.

Paper

Population estimates of wintering waterbirds in Great Britain. Teresa Frost, Graham Austin, Richard Hearn, Stephen McAvoy, Anna Robinson, David Stroud, Ian Woodward and Simon Wotton. Published in British Birds Volume 112. March 2019.

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton, to celebrate waders and wader research.  Many of the articles are based on previously published papers, with the aim of making wader science available to a broader audience.

@grahamfappleton

Waders are long-lived birds!

The BTO longevity record for a wader is held by an Oystercatcher that was ringed as an adult in Lincolnshire on 30 July 1976 and shot in France on 4 September 2017, 41 years 1 month and 5 days later. It was an adult when ringed so will have been at least 43 years old when it died.

The second oldest Oystercatcher was ringed as a chick by Adrian Blackburn in Lincolnshire (east coast of England) on 14 June 1970 and last caught by the Wash Wader Ringing Group on 16 July 2010, in virtually the same bit of the county. The time between ringing and last capture was 40 years 1 month and 2 days. Perhaps this bird is still alive and has celebrated its fiftieth birthday?

Just to put records for British & Irish waders into context, the record for seabirds was set by a Manx Shearwater, at 50 years 11 months and 21 days, for waterfowl it’s a Pink-footed Goose (38 years 7 months and 7 days) and the longevity record for a passerine was set by a Rook (22 years 11 months 0 days).

This blog summarises records from the BTO Ringing Scheme between 1909 and 2021. These longevity records might be useful for a bird club quiz but they tell us very little about the health of wader populations. The real thing that is of interest is survival rates. Measuring the proportion of adult birds that survive through until the next year turns out to be exceptionally important to our understanding of wader conservation. There will be more about this later.

Records from the BTO scheme

The list of records below is taken from the Online Ringing Report, produced by the British Trust for Ornithology. (The link to the longevity records can be found at the bottom of the web-page). The report covers all birds ringed and/or reported in Britain & Ireland up until the end of 2021. I aim to update this blog shortly after each new annual report is published.

For each species, longevity is defined as the time between ringing and the most recent report of that bird. For a chick, this figure is virtually equivalent to age but a bird first ringed when already an adult may be many years older than the longevity figure. The third column is the number of birds ringed for each species (up to the end of 2021). Records for species of which fewer than 3000 individuals have been ringed may be unrepresentative, given that small sample size might affect the longevity record. With fewer birds being handled, the chance of catching a bird that is going to live a long time is low, as is the chance of it being caught again many years later.

In common with most groups of birds, the longest-lived ones are the biggest. Only Oystercatchers, Curlews and Bar-tailed Godwits have so far broken the 30-year barrier. At the other end of the scale, for smaller species, only the Ringed Plover has reached 20 years.

Grit wears even the hardest of metal rings (Richard Chandler)

With the passage of time, two things get older, the bird and its ring (or three things, if you think about the age of the ringers). Early rings were made of alloys of aluminium and these deteriorated quite rapidly, especially in salt water. Many of these rings will have given up long before the birds that were ringed. The widespread introduction of harder alloys in the 1970s has helped to increase longevity records.

Species such as Turnstone still wear out their rings and the oldest Oystercatchers are often birds that have carried two or more rings during the course of their lives. Such replacements only take place in areas where long-term studies are taking place, as was the case for the 40-year-old Oystercatcher mentioned above. It was first ringed as SS58540 but also known as FC15938 and FP99170.

Another factor affecting our ability to appreciate just how long a wader can live is the use of colour-rings. The record-breaking Black-tailed Godwit is currently EF90838. This bird was hatched from an egg in Iceland in 1977 and received a metal ring on 24 October that autumn, at Butley in Suffolk. Many east-coast Black-tailed Godwits moult on the Wash (between Lincolnshire and Norfolk) and this bird was caught there in 1993. Already 16 years-old, it received two colour-rings that identified it as a bird taking part in a new Wash-based study, but not as an individual. In 1996, it was caught on the Wash again and given an individual set of rings. It was never caught again but was seen many, many times – most recently on 12 April 2001 by the late John Parslow.

Getting old

The annual renewal of a wader’s feathers enables an unringed individual wader to hide its age. The picture alongside was taken by Allison Kew, of the Wash Wader Ringing Group. This ringed Oystercatcher was well into its thirties at the time – older than any of the people in the photograph.

If still alive then a bird will migrate and attempt to breed in the same way as in the previous year, repeating the process for decades. Senescence probably kicks in eventually; there is some evidence of lower annual survival and reduced breeding success at the upper end of a species’ life-span. Long-term colour-ringing will enable this topic to be explored further in due course.

Survival

As mentioned earlier, although the longevity of a species might tell us something about annual survival rates, in that birds with high longevity almost certainly have the highest survival rates, being able to measure the proportion of adult birds that survive from one year through to the next is far more valuable.

Waders adopt a ‘high-survival and low breeding-output’ strategy. Most waders have an annual survival rate of between 70% and 90%. This means that a pair of Lapwings, for instance, only needs to raise an average of 0.7 chicks per year to maintain a stable population. Unfortunately, this is not easy to achieve, as you can read here.

The occasional good breeding season can give a real boost to population levels, as we saw for Icelandic Black-tailed Godwits in the summer of 2017, as you can read here.

By collecting records of colour-ringed birds it is possible to measure the annual survival rates of wader populations, as explained here in this blog about Bar-tailed Godwits.

When survival rates drop, the effect on population levels is immediate and dramatic, as discussed in this blog about the waders that use the Yellow Sea. Populations of Bar-tailed Godwit, Red Knot and Great Knot that winter in Australia and New Zealand were particularly badly affected by habitat removal, leading to a sudden drop in survival rates and rapid declines in numbers.

There is a global review of survival rates in this paper: Méndez, V., Alves, J. A., Gill, J. A. and Gunnarsson, T. G. (2018), Patterns and processes in shorebird survival rates: a global review. Ibis. doi:10.1111/ibi.12586. The paper is summarised in this WaderTales blog: Measuring shorebird survival.

Please help to measure survival rates

The chance of finding a ringed bird that breaks a current longevity record is tiny but every birdwatcher who reports a colour-ringed wader is helping to monitor survival rates. If you have ever done so – thank you.

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton, to celebrate waders and wader research.  Many of the articles are based on previously published papers, with the aim of making wader science available to a broader audience.

@grahamfappleton

Wetland Bird Survey: working for waders

Red-listed Curlews, Scottish Oystercatchers, a boom in Black-tailed Godwits and the need for safe roost sites. Here’s a selection of WaderTales blogs that may appeal to counters who contribute to the UK Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS) and other birdwatchers who like waders/shorebirds.

It’s over 70 years since UK birdwatchers started to count waders and waterfowl and there are now over 3000 registered Wetland Bird Survey volunteers.

The work that volunteers do to chart the rises and falls of species as diverse as Redshanks and Whooper Swans provides a unique insight into the fortunes of our wintering waterbirds. As a tribute to the people behind the binoculars and telescopes, a few WaderTales articles that use WeBS data are highlighted below. Click on the links in bold if you want to read a particular story. Link to latest WeBS report.

Curlew counts

WeBS counts for Curlew in Great Britain between 1974 and 2016

In the blog Is the Curlew really near-threatened? WeBS counts are used to show how numbers have changed over the decades. There might have been a boost in numbers when Curlew came off the hunting quarry list in Great Britain in 1981 but declines in the last 15 years reflect issues birds face in the breeding season in many parts of their European range.

This blog discusses how much the 1980 to 1995 recovery in winter numbers can be attributed to hunting – After the hunting stopped.

Internationally, Eurasian Curlews are classified as near-threatened and in the UK they are now red listed. WeBS counts in Northern Ireland, alongside I-WeBS counts in the Republic, were successfully used to argue for the cessation of shooting across the island of Ireland in 2012.

Scottish and Welsh Oystercatchers

Oystercatchers are unusual, amongst waders, in that they feed their young

Surely the Oystercatcher is one wader species that we don’t need to worry about? Although the blog Oystercatcher: from shingle beach to roof-top leads with nesting behaviour, WeBS counts are used to illustrate regional trends in different parts of the United Kingdom. In Scotland, there is concern about poor breeding success, while in parts of Wales and England, WeBS counts may provide a way of measuring the population-level effects of cockle fishing and diseases affecting shellfish.

Three very different trajectories for national WeBS counts for Oystercatchers since 1974

WeBS counts were used to explain what happened to the Oystercatchers that winter in South Wales when cockle numbers collapsed. One of the key messages from the study is that it is really important to protect networks of sites, to give waders alternative feeding sites when conditions change. See When Oystercatchers can’t find food.

Mid-winter movements

The annual WeBS report highlights the months in which counts are at their highest in different estuaries. For Knot, for instance, the highest counts on the Wash are in September, in other east-coast estuaries and on the Dee the peak is in December, whilst further north, in Morecambe Bay and the Solway, top numbers occur in January and February.

In Godwits & Godwiteers, which focuses on the superb work of observers who track the movements of colour-ringed Black-tailed Godwits, WeBS counts from east coast estuaries and the Ouse Washes illustrate the move inland that occurs as the winter progresses.

Population estimates

These two blogs review the latest wader population estimates for Great Britain and the island of Ireland

National patterns and local counts

Groups of WeBS counters who cover local estuaries will be the first to notice changes in the numbers of the key species that use their own sites. If the number of Dunlin drops, is that a local phenomenon or part of a national picture? Is there always a strong link between national declines (or increases) and site-based counts? Interpreting changing wader counts provides some answers. It emphasises just how reluctant waders are to change wintering sites between years.

High-tide roosts

Every WeBS counter will appreciate the value of a safe (undisturbed) roosting site, whether this be used by waders or by ducks and geese. In A place to roost, WeBS counts for Black-tailed Godwits are used to assess the national and international importance of an individual roosting site in northwest England. The main thread, however, is about the energy expenditure associated with sleeping (not very much) and travelling to and from a safe roost site (lots). An interesting add-on is the story of what happened to Cardiff’s Redshanks when the estuary was turned into a lake.

New recruits

If adult birds don’t change their winter homes then increases in local populations may well reflect good breeding years for wader species. 2017 was a good year for several species that breed in Iceland, particularly Black-tailed Godwits. A great summer for Iceland’s waders puts the year’s productivity into context and gives an update on wader research that is being undertaken by the South Iceland Research Centre (University of Iceland), the University of East Anglia (UK) and the University of Aveiro (Portugal). If you have ever seen a colour-ringed Black-tailed Godwit, Ringed Plover, Oystercatcher or Whimbrel you may well find this interesting.

On the open shore

The blog News & Oystercatchers was written to promote the Non-estuarine Waterbird Survey of 2015/16, or NEWS-III. There are a lot of waders on the shorelines that link the estuaries that are covered for WeBS and, every few years, volunteers are asked to count these birds. In NEWS-II (2006/07), it was estimated that 87% of Purple Sandpipers were to be found on the open shore (see table) with high numbers of several other species.

There’s an assessment of the results from NEWS-III in Waders on the Coast.

The UK Red List

The UK holds hugely important numbers of wintering waders. This is emphasised in the blog UK Waders: “Into the Red”. There will be no surprise that Curlew is on the list but would Ringed Plover be on your ‘red list’? Dunlin and Purple Sandpiper are both recent additions, on the back of the NEWS-III counts.

New and increased threats (an addition in Nov 2022)

Diseases, changes in habitat quality and pressure from developers are not new threats to the UK’s waders but, after a period of relative calm, there are several reasons to be worried.

• HPAI has decimated seabird populations and we know that waders are at risk too. WeBS counts will monitor the seriousness of outbreaks.
• Lack of investment in sewage treatment, coupled with more frequent heavy downpours, is impacting on our estuaries and beaches. Mats of algae can reduce feeding opportunities and who knows what our waders will end up eating? Low-tide counts, in particular, will be valuable when trying to detect displacements of flocks.
• Wind energy is relatively cheap and clean but turbines need to be sited sensibly. WeBS counts, Low-tide counts and tracking will help planners, government agencies and NGO’s to minimise impacts on migrating waders.
• Given the increased price of electricity, the economic viability of tidal barrage schemes has increased. Up-to-date information is going to be important, as NGOs try to minimise habitat destruction.
• Estuaries have been pretty well protected under European legislation and it is not surprising that more unscrupulous developers are seeking opportunities to grab ‘unused’ land, emboldened by freeports and under-funded country agencies. Here’s hoping that conservation values will be maintained.
• There is an increasing realisation that waders, such as Curlew, Oystercatcher and Black-tailed Godwit need feeding areas above the high-tide mark. We need to make sure that WeBS counts are covering these sites. Birdwatchers can help by counting waders on playing fields, farmland and potential development sites, and reporting them via BirdTrack.

Many more blogs to choose from

There are over 130 WaderTales blogs to choose from in this list. Five of these articles might be of particular interest to WeBS counters:

• 

  Knot migration

  Which wader, when and why? gives an overview of the migration of waders into, out of and through Britain & Ireland. The patterns help to explain why the peak numbers for Sanderling occur on the Wash in August, on the Dee in November and on the North Norfolk coast in May, for instance.

• Bar-tailed Godwits: migration & survival  contrasts the different migration patterns of the two races of Bar-tailed Godwits that use British & Irish estuaries and explains the importance of colour-rings in the calculation of survival rates. On the other side of the world, Wader declines in the shrinking Yellow Sea shows how quickly numbers can change if the annual survival probabilities of adults fall. 
• The not-so-Grey Plover focuses on the Grey or Black-bellied Plover but the real story is about moult. British and Irish estuaries are important to huge numbers of moulting waders. WeBS counters often don’t have time to look at individual birds but, with the right camera, you can learn a lot about waders by checking out the right feathers. The Grey Plover is an under-studied species but we are starting to learn more about these Plovers from the north.

Thank you

I use WeBS data a lot – in my blogs and in articles – and I appreciate the tremendous value of data collected each month by thousands of contributors. They monitor the condition of their local patches and have directly contributed to local, national and international reviews of the conservation status of wintering waterbirds. To every current and past WeBS counter – ‘thank you!’

There’s a (large) selection of papers using WeBS data here, on the BTO website. The Wetland Bird Survey is run by the BTO, in partnership with RSPB and JNCC (which acts on behalf of NE, NRW, SNH & DAERA), and in association with WWT.

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton, to celebrate waders and wader research.  Many of the articles are based on previously published papers, with the aim of making wader science available to a broader audience.

@grahamfappleton

Wader declines in the shrinking Yellow Sea

An important paper by Colin Studds and colleagues shines a spotlight on the Yellow Sea, where waders/shorebirds have lost vast areas of feeding habitat during China’s economic boom.

Waders make some of the most remarkable migratory journeys in the bird world and many rely on a few key estuaries to refuel, especially as they head north to breed. For hundreds of thousands of waders on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, from tiny Red-necked Stints to Far Eastern Curlews, the Yellow Sea is absolutely crucial. A new paper by Colin Studds and sixteen colleagues collates the available information on current population trends of waders using this flyway and shows how these relate to the reliance of each species on the Yellow Sea. The more a species relies on disappearing mudflats, between China and the Korean peninsular, the faster it is declining.

As Colin Studds says: “Scientists have long believed that loss of these rest stops could be related to the declines, but there was no smoking gun.” Now there is. The new paper is published in Nature Communications.

Rapid population decline in migratory shorebirds relying on Yellow Sea tidal mudflats as stopover sites (Nature Communications 8:14895 | DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14895)

Establishing the routes

Bar-tailed Godwits make epic migratory journeys

Over the last twenty years, satellite tracking has revealed the amazing migratory journeys of shorebirds on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. The most famous wader ever must be E7, which was the first Bar-tailed Godwit to be tracked from Alaska to New Zealand in one continuous journey, covering the 11,600 km journey in 9 days. When E7 flew from New Zealand to the Yellow Sea in the next spring, on the first leg of its return journey, that was another flight of 10,200 km in 7 days.

It’s not just Bar-tailed Godwits that link New Zealand and Australia to the Yellow Sea. Colour-ringing has established that at least 10 wader species use this staging area during their northward migration in spring.

Counts by Birdwatchers

Far Eastern Curlew is one of the fastest declining species on the flyway. There is a WaderTales blog about the global plight of members of the curlew/godwit family here.

Annual counts of waders have been taking place in sites across Australia and New Zealand since the early 1980s. Colin Studds and his colleagues use data collected during the non-breeding seasons between 1993 and 2012 from 43 of these key locations. The analysis relies on the work of scores of volunteer birdwatchers who undertake these counts during the months from October through to March. The count data used in this paper focused on December and January, when there is least likelihood of within-season movement. Some of the declines have been dramatic; in twenty years, the number of Far Eastern Curlew fell by about 60%, with a 75% drop in Curlew Sandpipers, just to give two examples.

If numbers are going down, then that suggests that these waders are failing to breed as successfully as they once did or that the adults themselves are dying in larger numbers than used to be the case – or both. The fact that no changes have been observed in the proportion of juveniles in flocks strongly suggests that survival rate is the key demographic parameter upon which to focus when trying to understand population declines.

Declining survival rates

Colour-ring observations not only establish migratory links, they also provide the raw data from which annual survival rates can be estimated. A typical annual survival rate for an adult wader is between around 70% and 90%. If the survival rate is 90%, and 50 female waders lay an average of 4 eggs during a breeding season, then only 10 of the chicks need to hatch and reach breeding age for the population to remain stable. If that same level of productivity occurred but the survival rate for adults changes to 80%, then the chance of an adult dying in any given year doubles and the population will drop by half in just six years. This illustrates that a fall in survival of just 10% can have serious implications for the population trajectory.

Changing Great Knot survival from 86% to 68% could reduce life-expectancy by two-thirds

The counts of non-breeding waders in Australia suggested that there were major changes in numbers for several species between 2010 and 2012. When Theunis Piersma and colleagues analysed the colour-ring sightings for populations of three species that spend the non-breeding season in Australia and breed in eastern Siberia – Bar-tailed Godwit, Great Knot and Red Knot – they discovered a decline in annual survival of between 18% and 19% in just two years. Their paper raised serous alarm bells. All three populations spend time in the Yellow Sea on their spring migration and Theunis argued that rapid habitat loss in the Yellow Sea was the most likely explanation of reduced summer survival, with dire (but uncertain) forecasts for the future of these flyway populations.

There is a global review of survival rates in this paper: Méndez, V., Alves, J. A., Gill, J. A. and Gunnarsson, T. G. (2018), Patterns and processes in shorebird survival rates: a global review. Ibis. doi:10.1111/ibi.12586. The paper is summarised in this WaderTales blog: Measuring shorebird survival.

Reliance on the Yellow Sea

Bar-tailed Godwits watch on as their habitat disappears (Dave Melville)

It is estimated that nearly 30% of Yellow Sea tidal mudflats have been lost to coastal development in the last 30 years and China is forecast to undergo up to 14% expansion in urban development over the next 15 years, much of it concentrated on the margins of the Yellow Sea. Within the remaining mudflats, there have been increases in algal blooms, heavy metal deposits and areas of invasive Spartina alterniflora, the last of which reduces mudflat availability. All of these changes have the potential to put huge pressures on waders that are fattening up for the last leg of their migratory journey to arctic breeding grounds.

Previous work focused on waders in Japan, by Tatsuya Amano and colleagues, had shown that wader species relying on the Yellow Sea while on migration are declining more quickly than those that are not but Japan is on the migratory flyway so this result could have been confounded by changes in migratory route. By using data from the the non-breeding season and looking at a wider range of species, Colin Studds and his colleagues have been able to link reliance on the Yellow Sea with the magnitude of population changes.

A key element of the new paper is the compilation of available data on flyway population sizes, migratory connectivity and Yellow Sea count data, in order to estimate the proportion of each species that rely upon the Yellow Sea. At the lowest end is the Grey-tailed Tattler, only 3% of which use the area, whilst 100% of the menzbieri subspecies of Bar-tailed Godwit rely on the Yellow Sea. When reliance is plotted against annual population trend the fit is remarkable. Interestingly, there are two very similar subspecies in the analysis; whilst the menzbieri Bar-tailed Godwits are estimated to have been declining by 6.1% per annum, the baueri subspecies, which is only 50% reliant on the Yellow Sea, has ‘only’ been declining at 1.4% per annum. 

Emerging Conservation Action

This paper provides further evidence of the huge importance of the Yellow Sea. To quote Richard Fuller, the team leader of this research “Every country along the migration route of these birds must protect habitat and reduce hunting to prevent the birds declining further or even going extinct.”  Issues facing birds that use the flyway are being successfully highlighted by the East Asian-Australian Flyway Partnership. Australia has signed agreements with China, Korea and Japan to protect migratory birds, and China and South Korea have recently begun the process of listing parts of the Yellow Sea as World Heritage Sites. As well as development controls, a range of mitigation actions are discussed in the paper – let’s hope that they are pursued with enthusiasm.

Update – January 2018

“Great news for shorebirds! China to halt coastal land reclamation”. Read more in this BirdLife International article.

The paper is free to download

The results of this study have been published as Rapid population decline in migratory shorebirds relying on Yellow Sea tidal mudflats as stopover sites (Nature Communications 8:14895 | DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14895)

The authors are: Colin E. Studds, Bruce E. Kendall, Nicholas J. Murray, Howard B. Wilson, Danny I. Rogers, Robert S. Clemens, Ken Gosbell, Chris J. Hassell, Rosalind Jessop, David S. Melville, David A. Milton, Clive D.T. Minton, Hugh P. Possingham, Adrian C. Riegen, Phil Straw, Eric J.Woehler & Richard A. Fuller.

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton, to celebrate waders and wader research.  Many of the articles are based on previously published papers, with the aim of making wader science available to a broader audience.

@grahamfappleton

 

Why are we losing our large waders?

A review of the global threats to the world’s Numeniini (curlews, godwits & Upland Sandpiper) does not make for good reading.

Icelandic Whimbrel in the warm conditions of The Guinea-Bissau

It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Eskimo Curlews were migrating the full length of the two American continents 150 years ago – but the species is now probably extinct. The Slender-billed Curlew, its old-world cousin, is elusive at best and extinct at worst. According to the most recent global figures (as reported to the Convention on Migratory Species 11^th Conference of the Parties, details below), there are estimated to be only 10,000* remaining Bristle-thighed Curlews, 32,000 Far Eastern Curlews and 77,000 Hudsonian Godwits. Why are we losing our large waders?

(Update* – Latest bristle-thighed population is now 7,000, according to BirdLife DataZone)

The perilous plight of members of the curlew and godwit families has been highlighted in WaderTales before (see Is the Eurasian Curlew really near-threatened and Dutch Black-tailed Godwit numbers down by nearly 75% for instance). Now, a group of wader/shorebird experts have analysed the wider conservation concerns for this group of large, long-lived waders. In a new review in Bird Conservation International, scientists ask if there are shared threats to the Numeniini (the Upland Sandpiper, eight curlews and four godwits). Can their findings help to explain why so many of these 13 species are at risk or, in the case of the Eskimo Curlew and Slender-billed Curlew, probably already extinct?

The Numeniini

The Numeniini waders span the globe. In the table alongside you can see that the conservation status of the group covers the full range of possible levels, from Eskimo Curlew, the last definite report of which was in 1963, to six species that are listed as being of ‘least concern’ (IUCN criteria). Even these six species are far from safe, according to a new review undertaken by 35 authors, supported by expert opinion from a further 80 shorebird ecologists. The drivers that have led to the declines of several endangered and vulnerable species are already affecting others that are currently categorised as being of ‘least concern’. There’s more about these important caveats further down this blog.

The crisis for the Numeniini is worrying wader biologists, ornithologists and ecologists – and some governments. They are working together to share information, identify gaps in knowledge, drive forward new research and to push for conservation activities that can reduce the pressures on these species, and others that share the same habitats. A key output is a newly-published paper, led by the British Trust for Ornithology’s James Pearce-Higgins but with authors from almost 30 organisations across five continents, who collated knowledge from over 100 experts:

There is already a great deal of concerted international action to save Numeniini species. This flyer was produced by the East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership

A global threats overview for Numeniini populations: synthesising expert knowledge for a group of declining migratory birds. Bird Conservation International. ISSN 0959-2709

The authors are: JAMES W. PEARCE-HIGGINS, DANIEL J. BROWN, DAVID J. T. DOUGLAS, JOSÉ A. ALVES, MARIAGRAZIA BELLIO, PIERRICK BOCHER, GRAEME M BUCHANAN, ROB P CLAY, JESSE CONKLIN, NICOLA CROCKFORD, PETER DANN, JAANUS ELTS, CHRISTIAN FRIIS, RICHARD A. FULLER, JENNIFER A. GILL, KEN GOSBELL, JAMES A. JOHNSON, ROCIO MARQUEZ-FERRANDO, JOSE A. MASERO, DAVID S. MELVILLE, SPIKE MILLINGTON, CLIVE MINTON, TAEJ MUNDKUR, ERICA NOL, HANNES PEHLAK, THEUNIS PIERSMA, FRÉDÉRIC ROBIN, DANNY I. ROGERS, DANIEL R. RUTHRAUFF, NATHAN R. SENNER, JUNID N. SHAH, ROB D. SHELDON, SERGEJ A. SOLOVIEV, PAVEL S. TOMKOVICH and YVONNE I. VERKUIL

A model for collaborative conservation research

Identifying the causes of the problems of the Numeniini is not easy. Species such as the Little Curlew breed in some of the most remote areas of the world, whilst the wintering areas of Bristle-thighed Curlews are spread across the Pacific islands. Understanding the full annual cycle requires international cooperation, willingly provided by scientists and volunteer ornithologists who share a common concern about these species.

One of the key elements of the paper-production process was a workshop at the 2013 International Wader Study Group conference in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. This was led by Nicola Crockford, Principal Policy Officer at RSPB, James Pearce-Higgins (BTO), Daniel Brown (RSPB), David Douglas (RSPB) and Jennifer Gill (University of East Anglia). It was preceded by a questionnaire survey of experts throughout the world, conducted by Daniel Brown and funded by RSPB. This two-stage process brought together information relating to population trends, demographic parameters (e.g. nesting success and survival rates) and actual/potential conservation threats.

James, Dan and David refined the summary, bringing it together as a ‘Conservation Statements for Numeniini Species’ which was presented to the 11^th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Migratory Species in Quito, Ecuador in 2014 (CMS COP11). This report, authored by Daniel Brown, Nicola Crockford and Robert Sheldon and published on behalf of BirdLife International and the International Wader Study Group is available here.

In the figure below you can see a snapshot of the range of information that is available in the Conservation Statements, in this case for Black-tailed Godwit . In particular, this COP11 document provided background information for two species for which CMS Concerted and Cooperative Actions were being proposed – Far Eastern Curlew and Bar-tailed Godwit. It also painted a backdrop to the CMS Programme of Work on Migratory Birds and Flyways.

The new BCI paper aims to highlight the crises facing the Numeniini, to outline the suite of threats to the group and to promote this collaborative form of expert-led synthesis. It contains details as to how the questionnaire and workshop sessions were organised – information that will hopefully be of use to scientists studying other groups and taxa.

Findings of the review

In order to help inform conservation management and policy responses, James Pearce- Higgins and his collaborators have reviewed the threats that members of the Numeniini face across migratory flyways. They show that most threats are increasing in intensity. This is particularly the case in non-breeding areas, where habitat loss (resulting from residential and commercial development), aquaculture, mining, transport, disturbance, problematic invasive species, pollution and climate change were regarded as having the greatest detrimental impact. Fewer threats (mining, disturbance, problematic non-native species and climate change) were identified as widely affecting breeding areas.

An endangered Far Eastern Curlew in Australia

Numeniini populations face the greatest number of non-breeding threats in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, especially those associated with coastal reclamation. Related threats were also identified across the Central and Atlantic Americas, and East Atlantic flyways. Threats on the breeding grounds were greatest in Central and Atlantic Americas, East Atlantic and West Asian flyways. Based on these threats, several key actions were proposed:

Three priority actions for monitoring and research:

• To monitor breeding population trends (which for species breeding in remote areas may best be achieved through surveys at key non-breeding sites).
• To deploy tracking technologies to identify migratory connectivity.
• To monitor land-cover change across breeding and non-breeding areas.

The East Asian-Australasian Flyway Partnership is a key focus for conservation action

Two priority actions focus on conservation and policy responses:

• To identify and effectively protect key non-breeding sites across all flyways (particularly in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway).
• To implement successful conservation interventions at a sufficient scale across human-dominated landscapes for species’ recovery to be achieved.

If implemented urgently, these measures, in combination, have the potential to alter the current population declines of many Numeniini species.

What is in the BCI paper?

As well as outlining a methodology which may well provide a template for the conservation of other groups of threatened species, the paper contains a comprehensive assessment of the global and local threats faced by the Numeniini. The discussion is the largest section – covering disturbance, development, pollution, terrestrial land-use change & predation, climate change impacts & mitigation, and hunting & harvesting. It provides an opportunity to assess the scientific evidence that supports expert opinion and usefully acknowledges some key gaps worthy of further investigation (e.g. drivers of change in the Central Asian Flyway and uncertainty over the population-level impacts of disturbance).

To summarise in a few bullet points:

• 

  Bar-tailed Godwits in the Yellow Sea. Another large slice of mudflat disappears as a new sea-wall is built. Read more here.

  37 populations of curlews, whimbrels, godwits and upland sandpiper are assessed.

• Of the 13 species, seven are of conservation concern (from near-threatened to possibly extinct).
• Most of the threats identified by the expert panel are considered to be increasing in intensity, especially in non-breeding areas.
• A greater range of threats was reported in non-breeding areas than breeding areas.
• Numeniini using the East Asian-Australasian Flyway face the greatest number of non-breeding range threats that were identified.
• The greatest threat, particularly in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, appears to be the large-scale development of key passage and non-breeding sites in coastal zones.

Quite why population declines are so common and severe in the Numeniini group is not yet clear but their large body size, low breeding rate and a consequent reliance on high annual survival rates may make them particularly vulnerable to changes in land use and habitat availability across their migratory ranges. The authors hope that this publication will provide a platform for the necessary research and monitoring, to identify and address specific threats, and that continued international collaboration will help this process.

Least Concern? Not really?

The phrase ‘Least Concern’ may be misleading. Although half of the species covered in this review (6 out of 13) are still classified by IUCN/BirdLife as being of ‘Least Concern’ there are important caveats for these species within the COP11 report. Bar-tailed Godwit was classified as ‘Least Concern’ until a few months ago, when a major, sudden drop in adult survival for two populations (menzbieri & baueri) using the East-Asian Australian Flyway was reported. The current list of ‘Least Concern’ species is:

Upland Sandpiper – Declining nesting success is being recorded.

Whimbrel – Up to nine subspecies have been described, four of which are declining in number. Demographic trends are completely unknown for five subspecies.

Little Curlew – Population is only 180,000 and numbers may be declining.

Long-billed Curlew – Numbers appear to be stable (only 160,000) but there have been previous extinctions in 7 US states and large parts of Canada. New climate change predictions suggest major threat to breeding population.

Satellite-tracking is being used to establish migration routes and stop-over areas for several members of the Numeniini. This is a Marbled Godwit.

Marbled Godwit – Only an estimated 174,000 individuals remain. Two of the three breeding populations are made up of only 2,000 individuals each.

Hudsonian Godwit – Only an estimated 41,000 remain, with a decline in the major Canadian population, where there has been reduced nesting & fledging success. The species was added to Canada’s ‘threatened species’ list in 2019 based upon this report from COSEWIC)

These caveats suggest that none of the 13 species of Numeniini can be considered to be safe. The fact that the threats to the six species of ‘Least Concern’ are the same ones that have driven the other seven species further up the ‘endangered’ scale – and even to extinction – is extremely worrying.

You can read the full paper here:

A global threats overview for Numeniini populations: synthesising expert knowledge for a group of declining migratory birds. James W Pearce-Higgins et al. Bird Conservation International. ISSN 0959-2709

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WaderTales blogs are written by Graham Appleton, to celebrate waders and wader research.  Many of the articles are based on previously published papers, with the aim of making wader science available to a broader audience.

@grahamfappleton