Dutch godwit flies to Sierra Leone

This black-tailed godwit video says about itself:

Limosa limosa displaying and mating….

Eemnes, Holland 08-04-2012.

Translated from Dutch ornithologists Gerrit Gerritsen and Theunis Piersma:

Dutch godwit Nouakchott improves distance record

Post published by BirdLife Netherlands on July 31, 2013

Nouakchott is a black-tailed godwit with a transmitters of the ‘Kening fan’ e Greide’ project. This female godwit from Egmondermeer (North Holland) was recorded on July 27, 2013 in Sierra Leone, a record distance of 5400 kilometers from her nesting area.

After successful breeding and adding weight for migration in North Holland and a stopover in Coto Doñana (Spain), Nouakchott left on July 14, 2013 from southern Spain. On 15 July she was recorded over the southern border of Morocco. Like many other godwits, after passing the Sahara, she made a stopover in the wetlands of northern Senegal. She stayed there for about three days and was recorded on 23 July above Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital, to which she owes her name. On July 27, she landed in the Yawri Bay, on the west coast of Sierra Leone. The Yawri Bay is part of the Ramsar site “Sierra Leone River Estuary”. This wetland is almost 300,000 acres and is of international importance for eight species: Kentish plover, ringed plover, sanderling, curlew, whimbrel, greenshank, redshank and western reef heron. It is also an important area for terns, including the rare lesser crested tern.

Few reports from Sierra Leone

It is rare for godwits breeding in the Netherlands to go so far south. Pieter Coehoorn of the Vogeltrekstation reports that there are only four ring reports from Sierra Leone. Nouakchott is the fifth and the southernmost. This is a new distance record for a godwit breeding in the Netherlands. She feeds currently on the mud flats at the mouth of the Bumpe river, a distance of 5400 km from her nesting place in the Egmondermeer.

Caught in Extremadura

In the first week of February 2013, Nouakchott was, like the other fourteen godwits called after capital cities along their migration route, fitted with a satellite transmitter near Santa Amalia in the Spanish Extremadura by researchers from the Universities of Groningen and Extremadura and the Alaska Science Center.

Follow the adventures of Nouakchott and other godwits with transmitters on www.keningfanegreide.nl.

Sign the petition to protect the habitat of grassland birds www.redderijkeweide.nl.

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