the great knot

Great Knot & Black-tailed Godwits at Mai Po, April 23 2013

Recent news from the Ornithological Society of the Middle East (OSME) about a Great Knot ringed in Kamchatka and discovered wintering in the United Arab Emirates in January 2017. The link to the website page describing this discovery is http://osme.org/content/russia-love-or-least-ring-kamchatka-great-knot-reaches-arabian-gulf and there is also a short video about it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucTMKBdUxAo&feature=youtu.be

 OSME have pointed out in an online posting about the Great Knot that the species” has recently been up-listed to Endangered according to the IUCN red-list of threatened species based on a recent population decline of about 78% in the Australasian wintering population. Small numbers do winter in the Arabian Peninsula and the sighting of ‘EI’ (as it is affectionately known) has established for the first time a migratory link between the Russian Far East and the Middle East.”

 That figure of “78%” is deeply disturbing and is presumably a sad indicator of the increasing loss of mud flats on the East Asian flyway.