The Great Knots of Peninsular Malaysia

Looking at the number of participants in the recent workshops organized by the Malaysia Nature Society S'gor bird group on waders, it appears that there is a surge of interest in waders watching lately. A few individual profiles of some shorebirds here would hopefully sustain their interest. This is the first part of a few series to come and i will start with Great Knot.

Great Knot is reportedly a long distance migratory shorebird. They used several staging sites/stopovers along the flyways in the Asia Pacific region on its annual trips between their breeding grounds in Siberia and Russia. Apparently there are 3 important flyways in the Asia Pacific region: i) the Central Pacific flyway, ii) the East Asian-Australasian flyway and iii) the Central Asian flyway.

It was reported that some of these Great Knot would fly directly/non-stop from Eastern Siberia to Northern Australia using the East Asian-Australasian flyway. (Info: Australasian Wader Studies Group - AWSG).

The spots on their breast as seen from the above photo is an indication that they are in the breeding mood but it is only probably about 30% to their actual breeding colors.

Here are some Great Knots with a lone Black-Tailed Godwit

Some nice under wing patterns from the above photo.

Great Knot migratory routes are said to be usually along the coast of China and Japan with China's Yellow Sea their main stopover site before continuing their journey up to Siberia.

Here is a Great Knot with a flag from Chongming Island, China. 

Roger Standen from AWSG was kind enough to refer the above photo to his contact in China and here is what his mate has to say about the above banded Great Knot:

For this sighting, we can say it was banded after April of 2006 at Chongming Dongtan Nature Reserve, because we changed our combination from white/black to black/white in order to use ELF. We banded about 1000 GKs one year, and most are banded during northward migration. We have very few resighting records from you there. I remember this number was only 2 in 2014. And this record was the first re-sighting during wintering period. We know some of our banded GKs wintering in Thailand by the sighting records. Now we know some also wintering in Malaysia. Thank you again. I'd appreciate if i will receive your resightings again. Please keep an eye out for flagged birds, especially ELF ones.

Roger Standen further informed that there is actually an international color code given to Malaysia which is "Black/Yellow" while the colors used in Kamchatka in Russia is the opposite i.e "Yellow/Black". We  should be grateful to these birds as they have save us the trouble and money to buy a flight ticket to Siberia. Instead they have flew a few thousand kilometers to our shores.

GKs with some Grey Plovers

IUCN status for Great Knot (at the moment) is at "vulnerable" stage but i think Red Knot is even more uncommon than Great Knot in this region.

There are some Red Knot in the photos below. Can you spot them?

Note: there are two Red Knots actually in the above photo.

Thank you for viewing ! More waders info coming your way soon - stay alert !