Friday, November 7, 2008

The Miri River Mudflat Buffett is gone!

Well, I stopped by after breakfast Nov 2nd to see our favorite spot for waders in Miri. Yep, that one across the road from HSBC. It's gone ... they've flattened both the northern and southern section of the river and the mudlats with it. Heavily loaded lorries filled with sand were going back and forth, several earth movers mopping up after them.

Other than the lorries and earthmovers, all I saw there that morning were 4 birds : 1xlittle ringed plover, 1xpacific golden plover, 1xlesser sandplover and 1xwhat I thought was a non-breeding gull-billed tern. It stood like a gull, heavyset black bill, black legs and stood quite tall, I thought initially it was a gull until I looked thru the scope. Will confirm which tern this is later.

THE MUDFLATS IS GONE! Plenty of waders sighted, recorded and photographed there back in February-April, the new season looked promising in August when we saw the little ringed plovers, stints, red-shanks and wood sandpipers with Karim Madoya. We were planning to follow-up with more obs in November and perhaps an AWC (first in the city) next year! I guess that is now completely out of the question, they beat us to it! By the time January AWC comes around again this site will be concrete canals.

BAG OF *^%&!!!

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