Australian Wader Study Group Grey Plover update Nº10.

Both Nad and Charlie on the move!

Over the past few days both Nad and Charlie have finally departed Bohai Bay and on the way to breeding ground.

Charlie is officially our first Grey Plover in Russia! After staying in northern Bohai Bay for 11 days, Charlie decided to make a move on the evening of 24th May and cross the Chinese-Russian boarder at mid-night pn the 25th May. Over the past 3 days, it has already travelled over 3,000km towards the Arctic Circle with average speed of 46kph. We hope Charlie will soon lead us to the breeding ground thus helping to provide information towards solving another of the key objectives of this project.

Charlie’s migration route to Russia

On the other hand, Nad, which has been “stationary” at Bohai Bay since the 25th April, departed 2 days later than Charlie. It has, however, only migrated the much shorter distance of 830km and landed at an inland wetland area in western Jilin Province, China. Charlie and Nad are now more than 2,400km apart.STOP PRESS: Nad has also landed in Russia this morning!!! Both of our Grey Plovers have made it to the breeding ground! 29th May

Nad’s departure from Bohai Bay

Meanwhile, CYB, the South Australia Grey Plover carrying satellite transmitters put on by Maureen Christie and the FoSSE team had also departed Bohai Bay on 27th May after staying in the same area for more than a month. CYA is currently still at the coast of Jiangsu Province.

Locations of South Australia Grey Plovers

The migration route of our birds is shown in the map below:

Ecosure (white), Mymi (red), Nad (blue) and Charlie (orange)

Fantastic!!!

Distance travelled by our Grey Plover since departing Broome:

Name	Leg Flag	Distance travelled
Ecosure	LLA	4,650km
Mymi	LLH	4,300km
Nad	LLJ	7,640km
Charlie	LLK	9,720km

The Grey Plover project team:

Katherine Leung

Clive Minton

Ken Gosbell

Chris Hassell

Grace Maglio

Inka Veltheim

Maureen Christie

Tony Flaherty

Reece Pedler

Roger Standen

Roz Jessop

Graham Parkyn

Eric Miller

Ila Marks

Vivien Holyoake

28 May 2016