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Fieldwork October 2024

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Friday 4 October

On the morning tide, recces were carried out at Gedney and on the east side around Heacham. At Gedney, Bar-tailed Godwit came onto the pools as the tide came up, however they were not concentrated in a particular area of the pool and so this wasn’t a great option for cannon-netting. However, a couple of hundred Sanderling were found on Heacham South beach, roosting over the high tide, where the profile of the beach is such that a flat area was present – this seemed to be where the birds were choosing to roost. This seemed like the better option, and so it was decided for nets to be set there that evening after the tide for a catch on Saturday morning.

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Fieldwork September 2024

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Sunday 15 September / Monday 16 September

Carole and Bernard kick-started the trip with some resightings on the Saturday morning tide. The team started to arrive from Sunday afternoon, and by evening, Ryan, Molly, Daphne, Jane, Tim, Myles, Chantal, Jelaine, Cathy, and Lys were all at the OSH. The group went out to resight on Monday morning at Snettisham, Heacham South, Heacham North North, and the rest of the team began to arrive from mid-afternoon. With the opportunity to do more resighting on a rising evening tide, several teams went out, visiting Freiston, Snettisham, Heacham NN, Heacham South, and Terrington. Cathy kindly led the cooking of dinner that evening (thank you, Cathy!).

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Fieldwork August 2024

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Sunday 18 August

Ryan was the first at the Norfolk base, arriving the day before from Carlisle, and he spent the whole of Sunday doing various jobs including hedge trimming, mowing and sorting out catching kit. Thank you Ryan for all your hard work! Lys, Cathy and Lizzie arrived later on Sunday and also helped sort out the house for the start of the week. Hilary went resighting and joined in with the gardening.

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A mixed flock of waders, some standing in water, some on the water's edge.

Fieldwork July 2024

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Friday 26 July

In the day, Rob P visited Frampton and Freiston and resighted 14 Black-tailed Godwit, eight Redshank and a Knot. The Knot was an interesting bird, being ringed in Norway in 2019 and not seen since that year. Later, two lines of five nets were set on Terrington outer pool. These ran parallel to each other and the sea wall, with the two lines being roughly 20 metres apart. The nets were watched by Molly while the team returned to enjoy a lovely veggie chilli made by Flo and co. The briefing followed, after which we headed back to the saltmarsh.

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IWSG: Where the waderologists of the world can find like-minded wader-people!

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The International Wader Study Group (IWSG) is a world-wide organisation with over 450 members who are interested in learning more about waders (or shorebirds for those outside of Europe) from the birds themselves and from collaborating with others. With the closing date for the next IWSG conference coming up, Katharine Bowgen gives some background to the group and to their conferences. The next conference will be held in September 2024 in Montpellier, France. Bookings for the conference close on 16 June and the abstract submission deadline is 17 July. For more details on the next conference, see the conference information on the IWSG website.

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