Shorebirds Workshop in Lima

Yesterday I attended an excellent workshop on identification of shorebirds organized by the Peruvian NGO CORBIDI with support from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, BirdLife International and the Universidad Científica del Sur. This is one of three workshops that has been organized along the Peruvian coast to train volunteers for the national shorebirds census.

During the workshop, Richard Johnston from Calidris (Colombia) introduced us to key characteristics that allow birders to identify some of the most difficult shorebirds. If you’ve ever tried to distinguish between different Sandpipers of the genus Calidris in the field, then you know very well it is not an easy task.

Then Marshall Illiff from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology gave a presentation on the new webpage eBird Peru. eBird is an online collaborative project which is open to all birders. The information from eBird is used by scientists in several ways; it helps to identify priority areas for conservation and maps the migration patterns and distribution of birds. If you don’t have an account at eBird I recommend you open one and use it for sharing your observations.

Marshall Illiff | Cornell Lab of Ornithology

Finally, the best part of the workshop – the field work! We were lucky to go to the Villa Marshlands near the city of Lima to test the knowledge we had learned in the morning. We were able to observe and easily identify some species such as the Semipalmated Plover, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Spotted Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper, Lesser Yellowlegs and the Peruvian Thick-Knee, among others.

Semipalmated Sandpiper | © Jean Paul Perret

Today, February 11th, the census was conducted simultaneously along the coast of Peru, a great effort to know the status of migratory birds in Peru. Congratulations to CORBIDI for organizing this great event.