Friday 7 September
The majority of the team assembled Friday evening to prepare for the week ahead. Introductions were made and included a warm welcome to Clive who was one of the founding members of WWRG in 1959 and was looking forward to revisiting old haunts. Early recces from Cathy yielded little more than c. 40 Sanderling on Snettisham Beach so the plan was agreed to mist net on Saturday morning at Gedney.
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Saturday 11 August
An early start to the trip for Rob, Cathy and Kathryn as they recced on Saturday morning and reported lots of Sanderling (1,000+) on Snettisham and Oystercatchers on Heacham beaches, with Curlew in fields inland from Heacham (Island camping club, 14 seen, three of which were flagged, with two readable). A Sanderling catch was planned for Sunday morning which would be set just after high tide on Saturday evening. A 17:30 meal gave time for additional recces prior to a 19:45 setting. Lucy gave the first team talk of the trip at 18:00 then the team headed out. Four nets were efficiently set before the rain started and the team were back at the base house by 22:00 for a pre-catch briefing.
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Wednesday 11 July
The trip started early for Cathy and Tim who met the plumber who had come on Wednesday to improve the flushing rate of loos – it seems to have worked well. Cathy then took the opportunity to do the shopping for the weekend and started cleaning on Thursday, with more cleaning on Friday (it now looks like we have a new oven).
So our second week started with brunch at 11:00 hrs after a few hours sleep following our first overnight mist-netting session. We headed out to recce/scan the new waterpark (under development) and the rice paddies at Taoizini to look for both mist-netting options for that night on the paddy fields and future canon-netting options on the water park. We set nets on two rice paddies again and had another amazing night with with 299 birds caught including six Spoon-billed Sandpipers (SBS) – amazing. Back to the hotel and bed at dawn this time – strange, we are becoming largely nocturnal, but are also up during the day…
Since the early days of WWRG group members have headed out across the world to help on wader projects elsewhere. This year is no exception and this month group members are part of a team working in Jiangsu on the Yellow Sea in China. The team, working with Nanjing Normal University, is aiming to catch and mark Spoon-billed Sandpipers (SBS) to find out more about where this endangered and charismatic species goes, as well as being able to work out population size. We are also aiming to catch a range of other shorebird species, both to assist local studies and to help train other members of the team.
