Thursday, August 09, 2012

Swinhoe's Plovers: new leg-flagged birds to look for!


Coming to a sandbar or mudflat near you? In addition to the one Thai flagged bird (black over green)and one flagged in Sumatra (orange over black), there are now 19 Swinhoe's Plovers sporting white over yellow flags to look out for  this coming migratory season!

The birds were trapped and flagged by Jonathan Martinez and Professor Fasheng Zou at Xitou beach, Guandong Province, China. The flags are on the left leg - the white flag is plain and triangular; the yellow flag is square-ended and engraved with 2 numbers.

If you are lucky enough to see one, please send the details - number, location with Google Earth ref, date - Jonathan at jonathmartinezATgmailDOTcom.

There's a very nice summary of the Swinhoe's Plover story to-date on Terry Townshend's 'mouthwateringly good' blog, here

Photos courtesy of Jonathan Martinez.

3 comments:

Hor Kee said...

Interesting piece of news Dave! Might be a good time to check out Tg Tokong - the first Redshanks of the season have arrived already.

John Holmes said...

The locations of any re-sightings will be very interesting...

Good Luck to Malaysian birders !

Antshrike said...

Dave, I love your blog but I need to make a comment here. Such a large ID tag on such a small migratory bird doesn't seem like a good idea to me. It's great that research is being done on this mysterious plover, but will what we learn be worth the potential danger to these small beauties? Of course if they disappear, we will blame it on habitat loss ( of great concern) and not on human interference.