Tracking the migration of Bar-tailed Godwits worldwide-by Dr. Roeland Bom

Tracking the migration of Bar-tailed Godwits worldwide

About the talk:

The Bar-tailed Godwit is an iconic migratory shorebird that can be found in almost all continents. Several subspecies are distinguished, each of them has distinct migratory routes and timing of migration. Recently the status of the population of Bar-tailed Godwits Limosa lapponica wintering along the Middle East and eastern seaboard of the Indian Ocean has been resolved, showing that these birds belong to a separate subspecies, named L.l yamalensis. These birds use previously staging areas in the northwest corner of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan, and migrated to breeding areas in north-central Russia. Global tracking showed showed that the populations of different subspecies are more connected than hitherto thought and also show that these shorebirds are threatened in many ways

About the speaker:

Roeland Bom is a senior scientist at the Royal NIOZ Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. His office is at the NIOZ, Texel (The Netherlands), but his prime area of interest are the intertidal mudflats of the Wadden Sea, West Africa and the Middle East. Particularly his research adventures have led him many times to the (still) pristine mudflats of Barr Al Hikman in the Sultanate of Oman. In my recent work I focus on the migratory routine of Bar-tailed Godwits wintering in West Africa and Oman and see how they cope with a rapidly changing world.