“Invisible Connections”: no, not the 1985 album by ‘Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient and neo classical music Vangelis’ (though I’m sure some old muso will end up here through Google at some point), but a beautifully photographed and lucid account in three languages (Korean, Chinese, English) of the journey made by migrating shorebirds flying from their breeding grounds in the Arctic through East Asia to Australasia - ie along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, one of the most heavily-developed and populated flyways on the globe.

Subtitled “Why migrating shorebirds need the Yellow Sea” and published by Wetlands International in 2008, this large format volume is the result of a team of renowned conservationists from all along the Flyway - including eg Nial Moores of Birds Korea (my brother of course, but a genuine conservation hero nonetheless), Danny Rogers and Clive Minton, Phil Battley, Bob McCaffery and Bob Gill, and Ju-Yong Ki and Yan Meifang - combining with Jan van de Kam, one of the best shorebird photographers anywhere.

It profiles the particular importance of the Yellow Sea as a critical staging site for migratory shorebirds in their annual north-south-north migrations. How critical can be gathered from the facts that some 50 million migratory waterbirds from over 250 different populations, including 28 globally threatened species, use the Flyway and many stage on the tidal-flats of the Yellow Sea between China and Korea. 50% of these tidal-flats have already been reclaimed/destroyed though, most of the others are probably already at their shorebird carrying capacity and many are still under threat, and the future is looking increasingly bleak for enigmatic and unique eastern shorebird species such as the Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper Eurynorhynchus pygmeus (a species whose demise should forever be linked with the catastrophic reclamation of the Saemangeum tidal-flats in South Korea), the Endangered Spotted/Nordmann’s Greenshank Tringa guttifer, and the rapidly declining Great Knot Calidris tenuirostris (a species mirroring the huge decline in numbers of western populations of its counterpart the Red Knot Calidris canutus).

Whilst there has been efforts made in - especially - the last ten years to promote the ecological value and importance of the Yellow Sea and of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, there is a sense that the world is waking up to the threats far too late. The Yellow Sea is increasingly polluted and over-used, and the Flyway itself is still nowhere near as well understood as eg flyways in North America, especially by the hundreds of millions of people who live along it and compete with the waterbirds for living space, food and water resources. Hence the reason for publishing every word of this beautiful and information-rich book in three languages: Korea, English, and Mandarin Chinese - the languages spoken by the bulk of the world’s conservationists (English) and of the region’s peoples.

Laid out in eight chapters and supported with hundreds of well-written captions, writing and then translating detailed and subtle text like this without lapsing into scientific jargon and remaining approachable for most readers with even just a passing interest in ecology and shorebirds has taken a huge amount of cooperation and work. The authors and translators should be hugely commended for their efforts (I know from personal conversations with Birds Korea just how time-consuming and strenuous these efforts have been!).

Publishing a book like this will not mean the ornithological education of the human population of the entire Yellow Sea eco-region (the vast majority of whom will never see it of course), but I don’t think that’s the point. What it does show is what can be achieved when people of different countries with perhaps different agendas put personal egos aside and work together, when a proper overview of shorebird ecology is taken along an entire Flyway, and when conservationists who care passionately about birds and who also understand that without community support conservation simply doesn’t work sit down together and write a book. The information here will be relevant for years to come and will be used elsewhere, the use of three, multi-lingual columns of text per page should be studied and copied over and over again by conservationists working in regions where different languages to their own are used, and the spirit of co-operation that permeates every page should be absorbed by (often bickering) NGOs the world over.

Does that make “Invisible Connections” a book of interest for readers who don’t live in Asia though? So far I’ve hardly mentioned the photographs, but in a word they’re superb. Jan van de Kam is a committed and highly skilled photographer, and - riding high on that spirit of cooperation I mentioned before - was taken or went to practically every wintering, staging and breeding area along the Flyway to capture the images that bring this book so alive. His personal journey has paid off wonderfully. There are some incredible portraits in here of birds perhaps many of us will never see ourselves but can still revel in. Many are full-page and simply beautiful (the Bar-tailed Godwits Limosa lapponica caught in mid-air on page 86 for example, or the breeding-plumaged Spoon-billed Sandpiper on page 25), but there are also whimsical photos (a Kangaroo looking at a Greenshank Tringa nebularia, for example, on page 112), scene-setting vistas such as one on page 80 of montane tundra of eastern Siberia which also picks out a single Great Knot standing on rocks in the foreground, and other photographs where every centimetre of space is crammed with the blur of wings and legs and where you can almost hear the calls the flocks are giving as they take off or land.

The photographs don’t just focus on the birds though. This is a book about people too, and there are numerous shots showing the way the region’s wetlands are used recreationally and as a food resource, of both fisherfolk and birders, of children and conservationists. The contrasts between the crowded, over-burdened estuaries of the Yellow Sea and the wide, empty spaces of the far north are striking (and heart-breaking - we really are a messy bunch), but this book is all about the connections - between birds, places, and people - that the book’s title refers to and they need to be here. If they reduce the appeal to some birders that will be a great shame, because everyone can learn something from this invaluable book. The important lessons it teaches us about the connections between wetlands, shorebirds, and people are of course universal and can equally be applied to grasslands, forests, and oceans - all threatened habitats that we are destroying the world over.

The text on the back cover (again in three languages) ends with a beautifully concise final paragraph: “This book invites you to discover the crucial role that the Yellow Sea plays in shorebird migration, and highlights the need for this unique and threatened habitat to be saved for future generations of birds and people”. How very true, and it’s an invitation I highly recommend you accept.

“Invisible Connections - why migrating shorebirds need the Yellow Sea”, by Jan van de Kam with Phil Battley, Brian McCaffery, Danny Rogers, Jae-sang Hong, Nial Moores, Ju Yong-Ki, Jan Lewis, and Theunis Piersma.
Published by Wetlands International, 2008.
ISBN/EAN: 978-90-5882-009-9