A mixed flock of curlew sandpipers and gray plovers feed in shallow water at the salt mine in Velddrif, in South Africa’s Western Cape province, where the team captured 20 sandpipers and three plovers for the tracking project. Image courtesy of Cassie Carstens.
- For the first time in South Africa, scientists monitored the migrations of 23 small wading birds from the country’s west coast as they embarked on a migration to the Arctic tundra, uncovering stopover sites they say could benefit from protection.
- In February 2026, the researchers captured 23 birds in Western Cape province and tagged them with tiny satellite transmitters to followed their movements, tracing different routes across Africa.
- Six of the birds have since reached their breeding grounds in the Arctic tundra, while six stayed in Africa, and eight stopped transmitting.
- The research project, a collaboration between BirdLife South Africa and other partners, is helping to shed light on the routes the birds take, and inform conservation action.
They have names like Victoria, Makgadikgadi, Wembere and Dwarskersbos — but unlike their namesakes, they’re not landmarks in Africa. Instead, they’re small birds flying halfway across the world, showing conservationists the places that should be protected to sustain them on their journeys.
Earlier this year, an international team of scientists and conservationists trapped 20 curlew sandpipers (Calidris ferruginea), small to medium-sized shorebirds characterized by their distinct downward curving bill, and fitted them with tiny, lightweight satellite transmitters. The researchers also captured and fitted GPS tags on three gray plovers (Plu, birds thought to have similar migratory patterns to the curlew sandpipers
With these trackers, the researchers are recording the birds’ migratory routes, or flyways, from South Africa to their Arctic breeding grounds.
“Historically we had supported a large percentage of the global population for both species, but we have seen a marked decline over the last few years,” Jessica Wilmot, BirdLife South Africa’s flyways and migrants project manager, told Mongabay in a video interview. She added the findings provide novel insights into these birds’ migration patterns.
While the threats the birds face at both ends of their migration routes are well-documented, less is known about what they have to deal with at the stopover sites along their 13,000-kilometer (about 8,100-mile) journey.
Identifying such sites and determining whether they can be protected, if they aren’t already, is one of the key questions the team is hoping to answer, Wilmot said.
The data gathered so far indicate the curlew sandpipers use three main routes when they leave South Africa, which is one of the countries where they spend the Northern Hemisphere winter. One route goes straight up through the center of the African continent; another branches slightly off to the east via South Africa’s Free State province; a third breaks west along Namibia’s coast before turning east across Southern and Central Africa. The birds then make their way across the Red Sea, West Asia, and Central Asia to their breeding sites in the high Arctic tundra of northern Siberia.
Declining numbers
The research team, consisting of scientists from BirdLife South Africa, Wetlands International, and the Germany-based Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, targeted male curlew sandpipers.
Using mist nets strung out across parts of a salt mine in Velddrif, in South Africa’s Western Cape province, the team caught the birds during 10 consecutive nights in February 2026. The mine is adjacent to Velddrif’s estuary and delta: a mosaic of marshes, salt flats, and reed beds that attract more than 270 different species of birds.
The conservation status of curlew sandpipers and gray plovers worsened two years ago, when both species were assessed as vulnerable to extinction.
Coordinated waterbird counts conducted by BirdLife South Africa at hundreds of key sites around the country corroborate marked declines for these and other migratory shorebirds, Wilmot said. “At some sites, the decline is a lot worse [than in others].”
Research has linked this to habitat loss in both Europe and Africa, as well as hunting and increased predation.
The estuary at Velddrif has experienced significant environmental pressures, from droughts and flooding, to habitat loss through accelerated riverbank erosion, and degradation of its salt marshes. BirdLife South Africa says it’s working to combat erosion and rehabilitate salt marshes in partnership with affected landowners to make sure these habitats remain a destination for both local and migratory shorebirds.
Tracking the birds: Some left, some stayed
Out of the 20 birds fitted with transmitters, six were tracked leaving Africa. Of these, five crossed the Red Sea, then flew across the Arabian Peninsula. The sixth bird, known as Barber, took a more northerly route across the top of the Suez Canal, then on to Syria, northward to Russia, before heading east to Kazakhstan, in Central Asia.
Where these six “out of Africa” birds ultimately ended up, however, is under wraps for now. The Max Planck Institute, which supplied the satellite transmitters fitted to the sandpipers, wants to prevent the novel element of its research being lost ahead of its publication in a journal, Wilmot said.
“We know that [the sandpipers] are [now] at their breeding grounds, we just can’t indicate exactly where,” she said.
Out of the rest of the sandpiper cohort, six stayed in Africa, suggesting they were young curlew sandpipers on their first migration. They’re likely to make the return journey to Europe once they become sexually mature.
Two birds stopped transmitting data soon after they were tagged, possibly due to technical glitches with their tracking devices. Six others transmitted signals for around two months, and then stopped. The team assumes their devices failed or aren’t receiving enough solar power to transmit location data, or that the birds have been killed.
However, their movements across Africa still delivered valuable information.
Important data for conservation decisions
For instance, seven sandpipers crossed Zambia, passing through a number of important bird and biodiversity areas (IBAs), Mary Malasa, lead conservationist with BirdWatch Zambia, told Mongabay.
One bird stopped off in the Luapula floodplain, a dense papyrus swamp in the far north of the country that currently has no formal protection.
“We have 42 IBAs in Zambia, and we know for sure that some of these areas have been lost to development and livelihoods,” Malasa said. “This [current research] creates a need for us to go out and update information on these sites, [to] see if all these areas are still intact.”
Another tracked bird, known to the research team as Kalahari, only got as far as Botswana. Kalahari, who is likely in his first year of migration and therefore overwintering in Africa, has been in the Ryasana salt pan near Makgadigadi Pans National Park since April, Wilmot said.
Movements like Kalahari’s raise the question among conservationists of whether it would be useful to extend the boundaries of some protected areas in the region. With some of the established stopover sites for long-distance migratory birds expected to be compromised by changing climate patterns, identifying alternative “buffer sites” for the birds will be necessary, Wilmot said.
“They need to essentially have another stepping stone where they can rest and refuel through a migration,” she said.
In the next few years, the team plans to tag more curlew sandpipers and gray plovers elsewhere in South Africa, including along the southern or eastern coasts, to discover whether they all follow the same migration strategies.
“The more individuals we tag,” Wilmot said, “the more we’ll actually understand.”
Banner image: A mixed flock of curlew sandpipers and gray plovers feed in shallow water at the salt mine in Velddrif, in South Africa’s Western Cape province, where the team captured 20 sandpipers and three plovers for the tracking project. Image courtesy of Cassie Carstens.
Barshep, Y., Erni, B., Underhill, L. G., & Altwegg, R. (2017). Identifying ecological and life-history drivers of population dynamics of wetland birds in South Africa. Global Ecology and Conservation, 12, 96-107. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2017.09.001
A few seconds with one of West Africa’s rarest birds
