If Norwegian Oystercatchers migrate south and west for the winter, how is it that thousands of Oystercatchers can adopt a stay-at-home strategy in Iceland, which lies at a higher latitude than most of Norway?
Braving the cold
As part of a project to try to understand why some Oystercatchers spend the winter in Iceland, when most fly south across the Atlantic, researchers needed to count the ones that remain. Unlike in the UK, where the Wetland Bird Survey can rely on over 3000 volunteers to make monthly counts of waders and waterfowl, it’s tough to organise coordinated counts of waders in Iceland. Winter weather, a small pool of birdwatchers and short days don’t help when you are trying to cover the coastline of a country the size of England.
Up until 2016, the only winter wader data in Iceland came from Christmas Bird Counts, first run in 1956. These coordinated…
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