Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 08:56:02 EDT Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Jim Stasz Subject: FYI: Western Atlantic Shorebird Association Comments: To: VA-BIRD@list.audubon.org, WV-BIRD@list.audubon.org, PABIRDS@list.audubon.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit A message I found on the Wadlers-L Listserve. I encourage everyone to join in this project. Hello all - My name is Eric Simms, and I'm the North American Coordinator for the Western Atlantic Shorebird Association (WASA). Being new to the listserve, I'm unsure how many of the users work with or observe shorebirds (or live in coastal areas), but I'd like to share some information about WASA, a fairly new project centered around shorebird banding. In short, WASA is an international web-based project designed to promote collaborative efforts among different shorebird researchers, as well as volunteer observers, along the Western Atlantic Flyway (Tierra del Fuego, Argentina to the Canadian Arctic). Research and banding efforts on shorebirds occur in several countries and many states/provinces along the flyway, with researchers often unknowingly studying the same species, flocks, and even individual birds. To avoid overlap and/or redundancy in these efforts, and to promote collaboration between individual projects, WASA provides a central site for researchers to house (and share, if they choose) their data. Aside from bringing researchers together, the web-based format of WASA allows, and encourages, the participation of volunteer observers in the various participating research projects. We are currently working to train and establish a network of observers along the length of the flyway (both North & South America) who observe flocks of shorebirds as they migrate along the flyway and report flock sizes and band sightings to the WASA web site. The data they enter is compared to the database(s) of participating researchers and a report is returned to the observer, telling them when & where the bird was banded and where else it has been spotted along the flyway. Although WASA has "gone public" only this year, we have already witnessed the value of such a project. The inaugural research project of WASA is the International Banding Project (IBP). This project has brought together researchers from Canada, the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina who are using metal bands, colored bands and flags, and radio transmitters to track red knots, ruddy turnstones, and sanderlings along the flyway. This project aims to establish the population sizes and primary stopover sites for these species, as well as the recruitment rates and arctic breeding areas of Red Knots. A group from the IBP just completed an expedition to the Canadian Arctic in July which provided insight into the breeding habits of red knots (see the expedition link on the WASA home page - address below), and plans are well underway for expeditions in Argentina and Brazil in Sept./October. To date, many observers from different states/provinces and countries have reported sightings of banded birds to the WASA web site, serving to bolster the validity of the IBP's work. For example, a banded red knot was spotted in Massachusetts several days ago that was originally banded in Argentina 2 years ago! I encourage anyone with an interest to visit our web site at www.hopscotch.ca/shorebirds/ for a more detailed description of WASA, the IBP, or how to participate as a shorebird researcher/bander or volunteer observer (or just to check out great migration maps for many shorebird species). We are currently working to expand both the numbers of research projects involved in WASA, as well as our network of observers. An on-line tutorial for volunteer observers should be posted on the site in the next few months. If your particular work/interest does not lie with shorebirds, plaese forward this message on to any friends or colleagues to whom it may be of interest. I also encourage anyone to contact me directly for more information about the project, or how you and/or your local birding organization may get involved. Thanks for your attention, and I hope to hear from you (comments about the WASA web site are greatly appreciated - we're always looking to improve its content and ease of use!) Regards Eric ********************************************************* Eric Simms Educational Technology Coordinator Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences Rutgers University 71 Dudley Rd. New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-8521 Phone: 732-932-6555 ext.505 Fax: 732-932-8578 Happy Shorebirding! Jim Jim Stasz North Beach MD jlstasz@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================