It's that time of the year again when the godwits are looking good and ready for their long flight to Alaska. An interesting talk at the Shore Bird Centre by Jimmy Choi about his godwit studies at Yalu Jiang and their migration routes and the difficulties of managing this major stop off route in China was held before high tide at mid-day. Then everyone headed to the hides to watch the many wrybill, godwits and knots that were feeding. The tide was rather a high one so we had to wait a while until more mud was available for the birds. A huge number of wrybill were content on the dry mud at the edge of the stilt ponds where a lone Shore plover fended them away from a small area of territory chosen at the waters edge. The other solitary bird was the rather rare black stilt of which there was only one visible apparently there are only 100 left.
