Last but not least
our last Whimbrel KU decided to move south after staying at the Yellow Sea for
50 days! And even more interestingly it has decided to join KS in South East
Sulawesi!
Very similar to KS
on its southward migration, KU departed Yingkou in Liaoning Province at night
on 24-Sep and flew continuously for 6 days to arrive at South East Sulawesi.
This 6-day flight covered a distance of 5,072km with an average speed of
35.2km/h.
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Fig 1: KU’s
southward migration from Yellow Sea to Sulawesi
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To our surprise, KU
joined KS to stop-over in South-east Sulawesi, they are only 60km apart from
each other at the moment! It is amazing to see these 2 birds once again utilizing
similar stop-over sites. Earlier this year during the northward migration, these
two birds were reunited in the Yellow Sea region in Panjin, Liaoning Province, sharing
similar paddy field habitats just 50km apart from each other. Four and a half
months later, after successful breeding in Siberia, they are reunited again in
Sulawesi!
We’ll now wait and
see if they will depart on similar days to head back home.
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Fig 2: Location of
KS and KU in South East Sulawesi
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As of 1 October 2017:
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Migration tracks of our Whimbrels:
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Migration summary on our Whimbrels
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Katherine Leung
1 October 2017
Very interesting knowledge thanks for sharing us with this.
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