[John Cantelo]

Sociable Plover - last chance to see?

Next time a Sociable Plover (aka Sociable Lapwing) turns up in the UK - if there is a next time - I strongly advise folks to go to see it. It could be your last chance. A deeply disturbing news item in the latest edition of 'British Birds' (July 2004 p364) reports that the world population may now be as low as 200 pairs. Yes, you read that right, it really was 200 pairs. If correct, this represents a decline of 95% in the last 15 years.

The decline isn't new - in northern Kazakhstan the population fell by 40% between 1930 and 1960 and then halved again between 1960 and 1987. However, the rate of decline seems to have accelerated after the political breakdown of the old Soviet Union and the massive land use changes that followed. That this disruption of the steppe habitat may be the cause of the increase in western vagrancy of this and other steppe species like Pallid Harrier and Black Lark no comfort whatsoever.

John

[Tim Allwood]

hey John

there have been couple of recent threads re this shocker

i have seen em but it's cold comfort

here's one http://www.birdforum.net/showthread....ociable+plover

[Michael Frankis]

Next decade's Slender-billed Curlew (seein' as there's probably less than five of them left now) . . . bit regretting not having been for any of the Sociables down south, but I did get the Curlew . . . (cue: curses from Father Tom McKinney . . . )

Michael

[jurek]

It is surprising that vargant Sociable Plover in Europe turn at least as often as in earlier decades. If species was getting rare, there should be also less vargant individuals, not?

I think that Sociable Plover may be less endangered than Birdlife thinks. It seems that knowledge about it in enormous areas of the Kazakhstan/Russia is rather superficial. Maybe significal groups of plovers are breeding in unvisited places?

Birdlife tries its best to put a label "Endangered" "Safe" etc. on every species, but it is more Official Best Possible Educated Wild Guess

[Desertbirder]

Unfortunately it seems that Sociable Plover is in great risk and in this case labeling it as endangered is in place. There is much work being done on this species at the moment and since many of its breeding grounds are remote and hard to reach there is significant survey work being done at the species classic wintering grounds. There is definately a serious decline in the species status and the recent information available is pretty disturbing. We think there are actually a bit more than 200 pairs left, but not many more, and this species needs all the help it can get. I know that the numbers of Sociable Plovers at their traditional wintering grounds in the Negev are plunging and this is disturbing since there were up to 100 individuals present in some places just 15 years ago...

[Tim Allwood]

Thanks for that Desertbirder

seems to be silly season at the moment - Endangered is quite a reasonable threat status - it may soon be at Critical level.

the birds gather to migrate as migration is 'learned' in this species - older birds direct the younger. The birds are not flocking pre-migration as individuals probably cannot find each other easily and are setting off all over the place. Something like 76 out of 80 breeding sites were not used last season

any of you who bought a raffle ticket from OBC will know that we are funding a survey of the breeding and a project to try and save this species. Hope it's not going to be as much hard work as Gurney's Pitta in Thailand.
Jurek, why don't you call up BirdLife and present them your evidence and save them a bit of money?

[jurek]

This is very interesting. If I knew about Lapwings, I would surely let the Birdlife know without prompting ;-). Can you tell, how many breeding and wintering locations were/will be surveyed? For example, decline at the western end of range in W of Urals and in Negev may be not representative to other areas.

Funny that you mentioned Gurney Pittas, because this bird actually made me a little sceptical about Birdlife work. For many years of heroic effort in Thailand, birds were found in hundreds in Burma. Good reason to wonder, for how many other species what we believe is false.

But I wish you good luck with OBC survey.