Great Knot

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Unveiling yet another mystery of avian migrations, a great knot from Russia, belonging to the endangered Calidris tenuirostris (Horsfield, 1821), has found its way to Kerala’s coast, flying over 9,000 km for a winter sojourn.

• The migratory bird that traversed the Central Asian Flyway (CAF) is only one of the two — the other has been sighted at Jamnagar in Gujarat — great knots to be re-sighted in India among the nearly thousand ones tagged with MOSKVA rings in the Kamchatka peninsula in eastern Russia.

Great Knot

• Great Knot (Calidris tenuirostris) is a small wader or shorebird. It is a medium-sized shorebird with a straight, slender bill of medium length and a heavily streaked head and neck.
• It is an international migratory wading bird that travels vast distances between the Northern Hemisphere breeding grounds and Southern Hemisphere summer feeding grounds.
• IUCN Status: Endangered
• Distribution: Great Knots occur around coastal areas in many parts of Australia during the southern summer. They breed in eastern Siberia, and when on migration they occur throughout coastal regions of eastern and Southeast Asia.
• Habitat: In Australia, Great Knots inhabit intertidal mudflats and sandflats in sheltered coasts, including bays harbours and estuaries. They forage on the moist mud, and they often roost on beaches or in nearby low vegetation, such as mangroves or dune vegetation.
• Threats: Loss of intertidal stopover habitats in the Yellow Sea region is thought to be a key driver in the population declines of shorebirds

• It is also potentially threatened by climate change.
• Recent evidence shows a very rapid population decline caused by the reclamation of non-breeding stopover grounds, and under the assumption that further proposed reclamation projects will cause additional declines in the future.