The Amazing Journey

Following a number of ambiguous signals over the past few weeks, we have just received confirmation that Dinara has made it back to southern Kazakhstan.

Omar Fadhil is an ecologist and wildlife photographer working for Nature Iraq.

Delegates attending the inaugural meeting of the Sociable Lapwing International Working Group in Syria, last weekend, received the welcome news that Swarovski Optik will be providing further funding to help their international conservation action.

Conservation scientists and government officials from fourteen countries spanning three continents are meeting in Syria today to plan collaborative conservation action that aims to prevent the extinction of the Critically Endangered Sociable Lapwing.

In September 2010, Nature Iraq undertook a combined monitoring and advocacy exercise in several areas of Iraq where Sociable Lapwings have been previously found on passage.

Here you can see a group of school children holding up posters that explain the rarity of the species and urge local communities to participate in their protection.

Syrian conservationists and RSPB staff conducting surveys in Syria this week, were surprised to discover Sociable Lapwings present in the country and apparently already on the return leg from their wintering grounds.

Exciting news has just reached us that a country record flock of 90+ Sociable Lapwings was present at Salalah in Oman on Christmas Day, 2010.

After an absence of any firm location data since early October, Erzhan – our most experienced traveller – has just popped up on our radar again. For the fourth year running we can confirm he is now back in a wintering flock in Sudan.

A new transmission just received from Dinara now locates her close to the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat.

A surprise transmission from Abaj on Thursday December 23rd alerted us that he was still alive, his transmitter was once again functioning and he was probably now wintering somewhere in the Middle East. Today we have just received the great news of a further transmission from Abaj that places him a few kilometres north of Al Qa’arah in the west of Saudi Arabia.