I posted this report on the Birds Korea website this morning: at the end of the report, written by my brother Nial, Director of Birds Korea, he mentions that the “outstanding highlight” was 35 Nordmann’s Greenshanks Tringa guttifer seen in a single scan during the Birds Korea/AWSG joint Saemangeum Shorebird Monitoring Programme. Have a quick read at the figures in the report and then let me explain just why so many Nordmann’s Greenshank in one scan is not only an outstanding highlight, but may in fact never be repeated again…

April 26, Geum Estuary With the start of the new spring tide cycle (and afternoon high tides of 6.5 m) four teams of counters covered the Geum estuary, with one team on Yubu, another on a neighboring island, and two teams on the mainland. In total, at least 50, 575 shorebirds of 25 species recorded, with several species in internationally important concentrations. Most numerous were Dunlin (21 829), Great Knot (13, 024), Bar-tailed Godwit (9 446), Grey Plover (2 735), Eastern Oystercatcher (1 255), Far Eastern Curlew (704), Mongolian Plover (533), Sanderling (198) and Ruddy Turnstone (187). While Grey-tailed Tattler (2) and Oriental Pratincole (1) were new for the Program, outstanding highlight was Nordmann’s Greenshank, with 35 seen in a single scan by NM, and a further 5 counted on Yubu Island. 4 Black-faced Spoonbill and 10+ Saunders’s Gull also noted. Nordmann’s Greenshanks Tringa guttifer and other shorebirds Geum Estuary, photo © Nial Moores/Birds Korea

Mnay people reading this blog will not know anything about Nordmann’s Greenshank - and why should they? It’s a shorebird that is almost exclusively Asian, migrating between Sakhalin (where the bulk breed), through the Yellow Sea (staging primarily on the vast tidal-flats of the Geum, Mangyeung, and Dongjin Estuaries), and on into south Asia (with a few scattered records to the south and east). Though it somewhat resembles the Common or Northern Greenshank Tringa nebularia, which breeds right across the northern Palearctic, they are very different birds - primarily because whilst the Common Greenshank has adapted to a variety of habitats, Nordmann’s is an out-and-out specialist: it breeds only in larches in undisturbed marshes in the far north, and it stages and winters on specifically chosen mudflats. It’s probably always been an uncommon bird - most highly-specialised birds tend to be - but over the last few decades its numbers have tumbled to below 1000 individuals worldwide. 1000 individuals. Think about that: going up and down the enormous lengths of the East Asian/Australasian Flyway are just 1000 of these beautiful birds - that’s less than most flocks of Red-winged Blackbirds on a local marsh contain, or the number of Starlings in a large park. When/if they get to Sakhalin they have to find each other, mate, rear young, and then turn around and go all the way back to south Asia…

But that’s not the whole story of course. These days it never is. Whilst we rarely do anything much more energetic than walking from our cars to our office desk these days, these wonderful long-distant migrants that fly thousands of kilometres a year are being driven into extinction. The human race isn’t impressed by this amazing bird, not concerned with its survival at all - why else would they allow the wintering estuaries to be threatened with reclamation, the staging estuaries in Korea and Japan to BE reclaimed, and the breeding grounds in Sakhalin dug up and destroyed in the search for gas and oil (in a 20 BILLION USD project financed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Japan Bank for International Cooperation)? A bird that generations ago would have hardly seen a human in its whole lifetime is now under intense pressure at every single stage of its life.

That’s the reason this post is entitled “Will this be the last year anyone can post a report like this?”. This is the year that developers and the South Korean Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry finally finished the most blatant act of environmental vandalism seen in the region for decades and closed the sea wall that blocks the Mangyeung and Dongjin Estuaries from the Yellow Sea.This is the year too that the plans for vast pipelines to be constructed and laid across Sakhalin Island will get the go-ahead and the infra-structure needed to support a huge industry (towns, roads, harbours) will be ‘developed’…

Next year the Korean tidal-flats will have gone, huge areas of Sakhalin will have been devestated, and the Nordmann’s Greenshank will be well on its way to becoming one of the rarest birds in the world.

It’s probably worth re-posting the following from a Reuters news report:

Will 35 Normann’s Greenshanks ever be seen in one scan again? I know I began this year saying I would be optimistic, but whilst I’m pretty sure that we won’t be saying goodbye to the Red-winged Blackbird or the Starling any time soon, it’s really very difficult to see how we’re going to pull the Nordmann’s Greenshank out of this particular fire…

For an interesting blog on the endangered Nordmann’s Greenshank please go to http://nordmannsgreenshank.blogspot.com/