Catch Report Broome   04/09/2011

Fresh from his travels in Europe, Chris was keen to emulate and indeed surpass Ady’s efforts.  Once again targeting Godwits and Knots for the colour banding project, the early team set a net at Boiler and also erected 10 cages and shade some 150 metres from the net. Temperatures in Broome have been climbing rapidly and the cages and shade erected early meant that the birds were able to be placed in the cool as soon as they were extracted from the net. This is a strategy that we are using more and more when ever practical as it makes a big difference to the coolness of the cages.

There were the usual dramas with birds of prey scaring all the birds away from the catching area.  At one stage it looked like we might catch 35 Eastern Curlew and then when they had departed the not so exciting prospect of 150 Silver Gulls!   Eventually the twinkling teams of Ray, Sarah, Maurice and Steve were able to persuade an enormous flock of 12-13,000 birds to arrive in the general area and of these a nice mixed flock gathered in the catching area and Chris was able to fire over a mixed flock which totalled 258.

It was pleasing to see not only returned adults but a juvenile Greater Sand Plover.  Interesting retraps included 3 Silver Gulls aged 12+, 1 Bar-tailed Godwit aged 12+, 1 Red Knot 16+ (first banded on 29/08/1998) and Great Knots aged 18+ ( first banded on 04/03/1996), 16+, 13+ and a 14+.

The next catching will focus on recapturing Greater Sand Plovers which were fitted with geolocators in March.  One was already recaptured on 28/08/2011.  We have had preliminary results that look very encouraging.

Liz Rosenberg

IT’S DRYING UP INLAND

How do I know that from catching? Well 3 weeks a go we counted 1 (yes one) Red-necked Stint in the Bay on our ‘winter’ count and a 44 Curlew Sandpipers. During the Saturday reccy I had about 200 stint and a few 100 curlew sands. When we fired the net on Sunday we caught 131 Red-necks and 303 curlew sands! Every single one of them were 1^st year birds (including the retraps). So they have surely been using the flooded grassland and salt marsh behind the bays mangrove fringe after our bumper wet season.

There is not much else to say with no twinkling required and an early catch with the net set below hight tide. So, not ‘much else,’ but there is still the small matter of an incredible team effort to deal with the huge catch with the net below high tide.

I had many of my usual stalwart and expert local team and we were helped greatly by 20 students and their lecturers (one who just happened to have a done a PhD on Western Sandpipers). I had 7 female students to set the net at the crack of dawn (I don’t know where the lads were!) and they did a brilliant and very careful camoflague job on the net and with me just throwing out the stones for the markers and them sinking in to the soft sand (the reason I didn’t want to walk out to place the markers, from the hide I could hardly make out where the net was!

The extraction was seriously quick but even so we did put the last 60 birds in to mixed species boxes as the sea wet our backsides.

A special thanks to Kerry for her 50KM dash to and from my house to get extra Curlew Sandpiper ELF’s!

 Catch details below

 Cheers

Chris Hassell

This is the first time a wader has been tracked with a geolocator on its complete migration in successive years. The bird had a one gram light sensor data logger (geolocator) attached to its leg. This device recorded where the bird was each morning and evening. In each year the device was attached to the bird in mid April on a beach at Flinders, Victoria, in southeast Australia. 

Ruddy Turnstones are a small wader weighing less than 100 grams and spend the (austral) summer months on many of the beaches around Australia. They are one of the family of waders that migrate huge distances to Siberia in Russia to breed. 

Researchers have used these data logging devices over the last two years to find out the key stopover locations which are so important for the birds to refuel on their long journey. 

Members of the study group include Dr Clive Minton, Ken Gosbell, Penny Johns and Prof Marcel Klaassen (of Deakin University).

“This is a fantastic result for our study group, which is also supported by a fantastic group of volunteers,” Dr Minton said.

“The data retrieved so far shows that the birds generally start their northward migration with an initial nonstop flight of around 7,600km in six days to Taiwan or adjacent regions.

“There they refuel on the tidal flats before moving north to the Yellow Sea and northern China. They then make a flight of over 5,000kms to the breeding grounds in northern Siberia, arriving in the first week of June. 

“One of the interesting findings is that after breeding, the return journey shows considerable variation, no two birds following the same route. Some return through Asia while an amazing alternate route has been demonstrated by these new results. 

“This is a trans-Pacific route where the bird moves east to the Aleutian Islands off southwest Alaska before making the huge journey across the Pacific, stopping only once or twice before reaching Australia in early December.”

The first record of this flight was in 2009 when the bird spent nearly two months in the Aleutians before setting off southward over the Pacific Ocean and making a nonstop flight of 7,800kms to Kirabati (formerly Gilbert Islands), where it stayed for six weeks before making the 5,000km trip back to Flinders, Victoria. In 2010 the same bird undertook a similar incredible journey, this time stopping off in the Marshall Islands and Vanuatu in the Pacific before returning to Australia. 

Turnstones live up to 20 years and such a bird following this 27,000 km trans-Pacific route would have flown over 500,000 kilometres in its lifetime.

Scientists from the Australasian Wader Studies Group of Birds Australia and Deakin University are still puzzling over why individual Ruddy Turnstones from the same breeding and non- breeding population should use such widely differing routes for their annual migrations. The study shows the importance of key regions within the flyway. Scientists are concerned about the ability of these and similar birds to cope with the massive habitat changes occurring as a result of large reclamation and urban development projects.

Contact details for Study Group members:

Dr Clive Minton:-(03)9589 4901Mobile 0427 831 080

Ken Gosbell:-(03) 9729 5524  Mobile 0429 804 524

Penny Johns    Mobile 0419 366 507

Prof Marcel Klaassen   Mobile 0488 255 992