Fwd: [OB] volunteers requested for Yellow-breasted Bunting survey in Mongolia

Anyone for a jaunt to Mongolia? Begin forwarded message: > From: “‘Buckingham, David’ david.buckingham@rspb.org.uk [orientalbirding]” <orientalbirding-noreply@yahoogroups.com> > Date: 13 April 2015 8:16:00 pm AEST > To: <orientalbirding@yahoogroups.com> > Subject: [OB] volunteers requested for Yellow-breasted Bunting survey in Mongolia > Reply-To: “Buckingham, David” <david.buckingham@rspb.org.uk> > > Dear All > > > > Would you like to join in with surveys for breeding Yellow-breasted Buntings in Mongolia? > > > > A Mongolian research team working on migrant birds is seeking help with locating suitable breeding populations, so that they can track their annual migration using geolocators. Teaming up with the Mongolian migrants project offers a golden opportunity to learn more about the migration of this threatened species. The decline of the Yellow-breasted Bunting has become infamous due to the size of the population crash and because it is the classic victim of several major conservation threats: it’s a long-distance migrant, it breeds on threatened natural grasslands, it winters in increasingly hostile agricultural areas and it’s good to eat/easy to catch, resulting in severe hunting pressure. Because the species ranges over such large areas each year, it is difficult to follow them and work out where the main threats occur. For this reason, improving our knowledge of the species’ migration is an important conservation goal. > > > > To make geolocator studies work, you need a reasonably large population of birds breeding in one area. Geolocator tags are fitted to breeding adults as these are the most likely to return to their breeding sites. It is necessary to recapture each bird to retrieve the migration data from its tag. If you do this right, each retrieved geolocator can provide more information than 10,000’s of conventional metal bird rings/bands. The aim of this year’s work is to locate suitable breeding populations. These sites will be revisited in 2016 to tag birds and in 2017 to retrieve the tags after the birds have undergone one annual migration. The surveys will take place in June and further details can be found on the OSME website at: > > > > http://www.osme.org/content/volunteers-needed-find-remaining-endangered-yellow-breasted-buntings-mongolia > > > > Best wishes > > > > Dave Buckingham > > OBC Conservation Committee > > > > This email and any attachments may contain material that is confidential, subject to copyright and intended for the addressee only. If you are not the named recipient you must not use, disclose, reproduce, copy or distribute the contents of this communication. If you have received this in error, please contact the sender and then delete this email from your system. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a registered charity in England and Wales no. 207076 and in Scotland no. SC037654. > __._,_.___ > Posted by: “Buckingham, David” <david.buckingham@rspb.org.uk> > Reply via web post • Reply to sender • Reply to group • Start a New Topic • Messages in this topic (1) > This group is run in association with the Oriental Bird Club. To find out more about the Club and its conservation work, and to become a member, please visit www.orientalbirdclub.org > VISIT YOUR GROUP New Members 1 > • Privacy • Unsubscribe • Terms of Use > . > > > __,_._,___