The Global Flyway Network (GFN) is a non-profit foundation that seeks to foster and strengthen partnerships between researchers studying the demography and movement ecology of migrant shorebirds across the world. This website provides the latest news about the research conducted by our partners, and enables professionals and laypeople to explore the movements of individually tracked shorebirds.
Using the navigation menu on the left, or scrolling down this page, you can explore tracking data for specific species, projects, flyways, or within a certain radius of your current or a selected location. Please bear with us as we are constantly working to expand and improve our services.
The development of the GFN (website) is led by the BirdEyes Institute for Global Ecological Change of the University of Groningen. more
Latest news
Bohai Bay northward migration report 2025
This is the eighteenth year for Global Flyway Network (GFN)’s fieldwork at the Luannan Coast, Bohai Bay, China. Chris Hassell, Katherine Leung and Yang Liu carried out the fieldwork for 5 weeks, from 30 April to 4 June 2025, 36 days in total. The main findings from this year’s fieldwork showed that in 2025, Red Knot Calidris canutus highest peak daily counts at Nanpu increased from t...
Spring migration work in Napu for 2025 (update3)
“The Luannan Coast is an important staging site of international significance for two subspecies of Red Knot in the EAAF .
”This is the statement we emphasize in our report every year. It probably sounds like the “same old story” when you just read the sentence, scanning in the field everyday we feel this statement is so true. Not only for the fact that we can find marked Red Kn...
Spring migration work in Napu for 2025 (update2)
After reading the last update you probably got the impression that we were wandering around birdwatching non-stop.
Well, there was a bit of that for sure. But then the tides turned in favour of scanning and we are on a run of 7 days of 03:30 alarms. Which gives time to make coffee and drive to the Nanpu seawall before sunrise.
2025 05 15
The weather plays a big part in the success of ...
Spring migration work in Napu for 2025 (update1)
Let’s start with some thanks to people for making the 18th year of GFN scanning at Nanpu happen. As usual, Beijing Normal University via Prof. Zhengwang Zhang and Dr Weipan Lei for support and administra ve work to enable our presence at Nanpu. Wetlands Interna onal’s Flyway Bo leneck Yellow Sea Project for their financial support. Our colleagues Yang Liu and Junfeng Liu for help wit...
Grutto landschap project
In 2020 is het grutto-onderzoek in Zuidwest-Friesland omgedoopt tot het “Grutto Landschap Project” en
aanzienlijk uitgebreid van een demografische studie van groot formaat naar een voedselwebstudie
waarbij de gruttopopulatie nog steeds centraal staat, maar met diepgaande aandacht voor
voedselaanbod, predatiedruk en landgebruik. Voor een uitgebreide omschrijving van de onderzoeksop...
Black-tailed Godwits (Limosa limosa) in southern Iberia, habitat description and finding colour marked birds from 1 – 26 February 2024Black-tailed Godwits (Limosa limosa) in southern Iberia, habitat description and finding colour marked birds from 1 – 26 February 2024
In this expedition from 1 to 26 February 2024 we visited the most important areas during northward migration for Black-tailed Godwits in southern Spain and Portugal. Our aim was to resight individual colour marked birds, describe the habitats godwits used and to gain information on threats and opportunities by field observations and meetings with local experts. In this report we present ...
Black-tailed Godwits (Limosa limosa) in southern Spain; habitat description and finding colour marked birds from 1 – 9 October 2024
In this expedition from 1 to 9 October 2024 we visited the most important areas for wintering Black-tailed Godwits in southern Spain. Our aim was to resight individual colour marked birds, describe the habitats used by godwits and to gain information on threats and opportunities by field observations and meetings with local experts. In this report we present a daily overview of our findi...
Projects with tracks (view projects on map)
Bar-tailed Godwit migration, New Zealand
38728 deployed locations
Determine how godwits use the Yellow Sea region on northward migration in the face of habitat degradation and catastrophic food supply loss. This is a collaboration involving the Global Flyway Network, Birds NZ, Massey University and Birds Canada.
read more ↓Black-tailed godwits NL South Holland
5228 deployed locations
In nature reserve De Nesse and Berkenwoude of Zuid-Hollands Landschaps and agricultural area management by Agrarisch Collectief Krimpenerwaard measures were taken to improve the habitat of waders, such as the black-tailed godwits. Previous studies show that the number of waders increase, however do they also succeed in raising chicks successfully? By tracking families we will be able to determine the breeding success, but most importantly learn more about the habitat use during the chick phase.
read more ↓Continental black-tailed godwits (data from Senner et al. 2015)
17403 deployed locations
1. Extreme weather events have the potential to alter both short- and long-term population dynamics as well as community- and ecosystem-level function. Such events are rare and stochastic, making it difficult to fully document how organisms respond to them and predict the repercussions of similar events in the future.<br> 2. To improve our understanding of the mechanisms by which short-term events can incur long-term consequences, we documented the behavioural responses and fitness consequences for a long-distance migratory bird, the continental black-tailed godwit Limosa limosa limosa, resulting from a spring snowstorm and three-week period of record low temperatures.<br> 3. The event caused measurable responses at three spatial scales—continental, regional, and local—including migratory delays (+19 d), reverse migrations (>90 km), elevated metabolic costs (+8.8% maintenance metabolic rate), and increased foraging rates (+37%).<br> 4. There were few long-term fitness consequences, however, and subsequent breeding seasons instead witnessed high levels of reproductive success and little evidence of carry-over effects.<br> 5. This suggests that populations with continued access to food, behavioural flexibility, and time to dissipate the costs of the event can likely withstand the consequences of an extreme weather event. For populations constrained in one of these respects, though, extreme events may entail extreme ecological consequences.
read more ↓Iberia Blackwits
96180 deployed locations
We study the flyway-ecology of Black-tailed Godwits to gain an understanding of their annual cycle and important location therein. We are especially interested in the spring migration (use of the Iberian rice-fields) and the pre-breeding period (Black-tailed Godwits arrive 5 weeks too early in order to breed too late!)
read more ↓Limosa limosa Black-tailed godwit China/Australia
46483 deployed locations
Black-tailed Godwits are widely distributed in Eurasia. More than 10,000 godwits stage in the northern part of Bohai Bay in China – Hangu, Tianjin and Nanpu, Tangshan coast during spring – to refuel at saltpans and mudflats. Their staging period lasts about 45 days (from beginning of April till the middle of May). However, there is very little knowledge about this population: where is there breeding and wintering ground? We have collected more than 40 resightings along the EAAF, and only three showed a connection between Maipo Wetland in Hong Kong and Bohai Bay, not even one of the Bohai godwits was connected with Northwest Australia, which is the main wintering ground of melanuroides Black-tailed Godwits – the only described subspecies in this flyway. Furthermore, morphologically, the population that appears in Bohai Bay have thicker and longer bills, larger body sizes and paler plumage than the described melanuroides godwits.
read more ↓Red Knot New Zealand-China
5556 deployed locations
This project aims to clarify the stopover sites used by Red Knots between New Zealand an their Russian breeding grounds. Geolocator work has identified stopovers on both migration directions in either the Gulf of Carpentaria or Papua New Guinea, along the Chinese coast and in the Sea of Okhotsk and Kamchatka Peninsula, but analuyses were equivocal about which sites (or even countries) were being used. This study, using satellite telemetry, aims to identity with certainty the sites used.
read more ↓Waders Tanga Tanzania
102321 deployed locations
From 15 to 27 January 2023 an international team of experts from Tanzania, Kenya and The Netherlands started the Tanga Wader project in the coastal area of Mwarongo, Tanga, Northern Tanzania, with the objective to deploy transmitters on a number of target bird species in order to obtain information about local habitat use and migration towards the breeding areas. This information helps understand the dependence of these birds on habitats and stop-over sites during migration and will create awareness of the importance of connectivity along the West Asian East African Flyway. 583 birds of 18 species were caught amongst which 200 of 4 target species. All birds were ringed and in addition, all target species were colour-ringed. 54 birds were fitted with a transmitter, using a range of transmission techniques to optimize the chances of obtaining a mix of detailed and continuous information about the whereabouts of the birds. Three months after transmitter deployment already a wealth of data has been gathered on the local habitat use by the birds and migration has started with the a number of birds demonstrating intriguing migration trajectories (situation April 2023).
read more ↓WWF-Hong Kong migratory bird tracking
20702 deployed locations
WWF-Hong Kong believes as problems grow in scale and complexity, we need future solutions and a creative multi-pronged approach to secure the future of wetlands and the iconic species that depend on it. With generous donation from HSBC, WWF-Hong Kong has launched the Wetland Incubator project to find conservation solutions for future thriving flyways. We aim at using tracking devices as a tool to investigate migration of shorebird species in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. To learn more about project: https://www.wwf.org.hk/en/wetlands/mai-po/wetland_incubator/
read more ↓