The Amazing Journey

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.

One of our tagged Sociable Lapwings has been tracked all the way from the breeding grounds in Kazakhstan to wintering grounds around the Great Rann of Kutch. Dinara, an adult female Sociable Lapwing tagged in May 2010 at Birlik in central Kazakhstan, was tracked spending at least ten days in the Indus valley in Pakistan [...]

‘The Amazing Journey’ project was designed primarily to improve our understanding of the migration routes that Critically Endangered Sociable Lapwings use so that conservation measures can be put in place. The data we are now obtaining is proving extremely interesting. For example Tatyana, an adult female Sociable Lapwing tagged in May 2010 at Kantarlau in [...]

Two new eye-witness reports we have just received confirm Sociable Lapwings are now passing further south through the Middle East and have arrived in The Gulf.

After an absence of transmissions from our satellite tagged birds for several weeks, a new transmission just received from Dinara is very welcome news and marks another important milestone in our growing understanding of the complexity of Sociable Lapwing migration.

Two transmissions recorded on November 13th confirm Dinara has now arrived in central Pakistan, in the Indus floodplain not far from Shujaabad.

One important aspect of our conservation activities for Sociable Lapwings is building an understanding of their global distribution and migratory flyways. If you’ve seen a Sociable Lapwing in the past three years and would like to add your sighting to our records please let us know by submitting a report.

Our breaking news today is that migrating Sociable Lapwings are now passing through Syria.

After more than a month without word, Dinara sprung a double surprise today when we received not only a new transmission with details of her current location but also confirmation that she is in southern Uzbekistan!

After an absence of any firm location data for nearly one month, Erzhan announced his presence again this weekend when we received a new transmission confirming he has left Kazakhstan, passed through Russia and Georgia and has now arrived, right on cue, in Eastern Turkey.

Following the exciting news earlier this week that Raushan has now embarked on a new route south on her migration and has been tracked to a location in Northern Pakistan, we now turn our attention back to the Sociable Lapwings that are following the established westerly flyway out of Kazakhstan.