West Indies

eBird Caribbean invites you to join in the celebration of the first annual WORLD SHOREBIRDS’ DAY during September 6 and 7, 2014. Many shorebird species have been experiencing moderate to serious population declines. The goal of this exciting initiative is to encourage people to count shorebirds at a local site to add to our knowledge, as well as celebrate and raise awareness about the conservation needs of our most extreme migrants.

Please visit the World Shorebirds’ Day website to learn more about this event and register your site for the Global Shorebird Count. There are already hundreds of sites and counters from around the world Click here to see which sites have been registered. The Caribbean is a very important region for migratory shorebirds—our beaches, mudflats, tidal flats, mangroves, salinas, estuaries, and salt ponds provide critical stopover sites for migrating birds as well as wintering habitat for many species which may spend up to 9 months of the year with us. There are still a lot of countries in the Caribbean without registered sites – let’s get more Caribbean sites on the map!!!

Many of you will hopefully be carrying out fall Caribbean Waterbird Census (CWC) counts—make this shorebird count part of your fall CWC counts (ebird Caribbean will be the only place you need to enter your data) and get a “two-for-one” (contribute to two programs with one count!)

Thanks to initiator and organizer György Szimuly for promoting the idea to celebrate shorebirds. We encourage you to follow the activities on the website blog and Facebook page.

Happy Shorebirding!

Lisa Sorenson

Executive Director, BirdsCaribbean

Caribbean Waterbird Census (CWC) Coordinator