The Overwintering Project

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      • SA Coorong Site Visit, April 2018
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  • Home
    • Migratory Shorebirds >
      • The East Asian-Australasian Flyway
      • The Ramsar Convention
      • Key Biodiversity Areas
  • Get Involved
    • The Overwintering Print Portfolio >
      • Contributing a Print >
        • Project Payment
    • Core Exhibitions
    • Local Exhibitions
    • Site visits >
      • SA Coorong Site Visit, April 2018
    • Community involvement >
      • ANSTO Shorebird Drawing Competition
      • The Flock
      • The Wall of Wings
  • Print Portfolio Gallery
  • Exhibitions
    • Current & Upcoming
    • Past
  • Fundraising
  • Contact

migratory shorebirds

Migratory shorebirds are the little brown birds that you might see out of the corner of your eye as you walk along the beach. With their white and brown patterned plumage, they are perfectly camouflaged by the rocks, seaweed and sand on which they live. Unlike seabirds such as gulls and shearwaters, shorebirds (all of which belong to the same scientific order, Charadriiformes) do not have webbed feet, so are dependent on the tide. They have beaks that are specially adapted to extract crabs and worms from sand or mud, and they follow the tide out daily, searching for food that will eventually help to fuel their long migration to their northern-hemisphere breeding grounds. As the tide comes back in they head toward the higher reaches of the shore to roost and await the next low tide.
Picture
Red-necked Stints, our smallest migratory shorebirds, are well camouflaged in the tide-wrack at Mushroom Reef in Flinders, Victoria.
Photo credit: Julie Milton
​The coastline of Australia and New Zealand is the summer home to 36 species of migratory shorebirds that breed above the Arctic Circle. As many as five million shorebirds leave our shores annually to make the epic 25,000 km round-trip to and from their breeding grounds. During a 20-30 year lifetime, their travels can add up to over 400,000 km. This is further than the distance from the earth to the moon.

They leave Australia in March or April, heading north to breed in Siberia and Alaska through the short tundra summer, returning home in August or September. 

The 36 species of shorebirds that make this journey annually from the shores of Australia and New Zealand are:
Pacific Golden Plover
Grey Plover
Little Ringed Plover
Lesser Sand Plover (Endangered)
Greater Sand Plover (Vulnerable)
Oriental Plover
Latham’s Snipe
Pin-tailed Snipe
Swinhoe’s Snipe
Black-tailed Godwit
Bar-tailed Godwit (Vulnerable)
Little Curlew
Whimbrel
Eastern Curlew (Critically Endangered)
Terek Sandpiper
Common Sandpiper
Grey-tailed Tattler
Wandering Tattler
​Common Greenshank
Marsh Sandpiper
Common Redshank
Wood Sandpiper
Ruddy Turnstone
Asian Dowitcher
Great Knot
Red Knot
Sanderling
Red-necked Stint
Long-toed Stint
Pectoral Sandpiper
Sharp-tailed Sandpiper
Curlew Sandpiper
Broad-billed Sandpiper
Ruff
Red-necked Phalarope
Oriental Pratincole
Picture
Bar-tailed Godwits take flight.
Photo credit: Chris Purnell

Title image credit: Chris Purnell
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