Jez Bird, Alex Lee & Sayam Chowdhury are surveying in Bangladesh, Sayam has mailed the OB group to say, “I am extremely delighted to let you know that we found a minimum of 25 Spoon-billed Sandpipers last week at Sonadia Island (in addition to other rare wader species including 24 Nordmann’s Greenshanks and over 450 Great Knots). We are planning to visit several more potential SBS sites along the Bengal coast in the coming days of this month long SBS search.” The bad news is that Sonadia is threatened by a development…

How cool is this? Adventures with Birdman: Ecuador-Jocotoco Antpitta has been chosen as an official selection of the 2010 Going Green Film Festival, one of only 30 out of more than 500 film submissions. If you’ll be in the Beverly Hills area from April 2–4, you should consider supporting Birdman Tim Barksdale and the inclusion of a birding flick in the festival.

It was way back in 1973 that the AOU lumped together the Myrtle Warbler and Audubon’s Warbler, creating the Yellow-rumped Warbler, or, more affectionately, good ol’ Butterbutts, much to the dismay of listers everywhere who lost a species from their various and sundry lists.  Now, as Nate of The Drinking Bird reports, the lump might be undone - we may have a split coming!  Listers, rejoice!

The Cabo Rojo Salt Flats – a 500 ha National Wildlife Refuge within Puerto Rico’s Suroeste IBA – have been designated as the Caribbean’s first site of regional importance for shorebirds by the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network. The Salt Flats support over 5% of the Caribbean breeding population of ‘Snowy’ Plover Charadrius alexandrinus tenuirostris and 2.5% of the Caribbean’s Wilson Plovers C. wilsonia. Over 20,000 shorebirds congregate here too, including large numbers of Semipalmated Sandpiper Calidris pusilla, Lesser Yellowlegs Tringa flavipes, Black-necked Stilt Himantopus mexicanus, and Ruddy Turnstone Arenaria interpres. This designation should not only ensure more birds being seen in Puerto Rico, but more being seen in North America too.