Skip to main content Skip to navigation
Home
Today's Show: Feathered Females in Charge
Wilson's Phalarope shouts orders
Listen In
  • Today's Show
  • Listen
    • Daily Shows
    • Threatened
    • Grouse
    • BirdNote Presents
    • How to Listen
  • Explore
    • Field Notes
    • Sights & Sounds
    • Birdwatching
    • Resources for Educators
  • How to Help Birds
    • At Home
    • In Your Community
    • Success Stories
  • About
    • The BirdNote Story
    • The Team
    • Partners
    • For Radio Stations
    • Funding
    • Contact Us
    • FAQs
    • Support BirdNote
  • Donate

The Importance of the Yellow Sea - With Nils Warnock

Few mudflats are more important!
Subscribe to the Podcast
Download
  • Share This:
  • Share to Facebook
  • Share to Twitter
  • Share to Email
© Mike Reagan/Hedge Graphics

For shorebirds like Bar-tailed Godwits, Black-bellied Plovers, and Dunlin, mud matters. Few mudflats are more important than those of the Yellow Sea along the coast of China, and North and South Korea, where more than 70 species of shorebirds rest and feed. For several species of shorebirds, their entire population relies on the mudflats of the Yellow Sea as a critical fueling stop during migration. Nils Warnock, then the Executive Director of Audubon Alaska, explains why this habitat is so vital to the survival of shorebirds.

  • Full Transcript
  • Credits

BirdNote®

The Importance of the Yellow Sea to Migrating Shorebirds

Featuring Nils Warnock, Ph.D.

Interview by Todd Peterson

This is BirdNote.

[Flock of Dunlin with the pound of distant surf]

For shorebirds, like Bar-tailed Godwits, Black-bellied Plovers and Dunlin, mud matters. Few mudflats in the world are more important than those of the Yellow Sea along the coast of China, and North and South Korea. There, more than 70 species of shorebirds rest and feed [call of Whimbrel]. Nils Warnock, Executive Director of Audubon Alaska, explains:

“That food in the mud gets converted into fat that they use to fuel their migration. There’s eight shorebird species where sometimes their entire population, relies on the Yellow Sea as one of these critical fueling stops. [And all of these eight species of shorebirds are declining…]”

What’s happening on the Yellow Sea coast that’s hitting shorebirds so hard?

“You’ve got, first of all huge population and very high human densities. Chinese especially, but also certainly in South Korea, huge economic engine burning right now. And so the cheapest place to build and expand is to go out onto your tidal flats… About 386 square miles of mudflats being filled in per year in the Yellow Sea, the equivalent of San Francisco Bay [in certain years].   

Especially the long distance migrants, they can’t do it without the fuel. It’s as if you’re an airplane and you’re flying over the Pacific. It’s not an option of landing. If you run out of gas, you’re in big trouble.” 

You can find links to Audubon’s work on the issue, at our website, BirdNote.org.

###

Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Calls of flock of Dunlin [59435] recorded by W.W.H. Gunn.

Distant surf Nature Essentials SFX #27 recorded by Gordon Hempton of QuietPlanet.com.

BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.

Producer: John Kessler

Executive Producer: Chris Peterson

© 2013 Tune In to Nature.org    November 2013   Narrator: Mary McCann.

ID#   yellowsea-02-2013-11-21yellowsea-02Marantz V Tracks 235, 236, 237, 257

www.audubonalaska.orghttp://www.audubonmagazine.org/articles/birds/stemming-tide-shorebird-l…

Link to East Asia Flyway: http://www.eaaflyway.net/index.php 

Web users are encouraged to go to Google Earth to see how huge wetlands are being diked and filled in along the coastline of the Yellow Sea.  

Todd Peterson
Writer
Mary McCann
Narrator
Nils Warnock
Guest
Support More Shows Like This
TagsChina ecology habitat protection migration shorebird shoreline Asia

Related Resources

Listen to a BirdNote show about the importance of the Yellow Sea for Bar-tailed…And another about the endangered Spoon-billed SandpiperLearn more in Audubon magazineBar-tailed Godwit - More at BirdLife InternationalBlack-bellied Plover - More at All About BirdsDunlin - More at All About Birds

More About These Birds

Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica)

Limosa lapponica

Black-bellied Plover (Pluvialis squatarola)

Pluvialis squatarola

Dunlin (Calidris alpina)

Calidris alpina

Sights & Sounds

Related Field Notes

December 18, 2017

What does it take to record the world’s birds?

By Gerrit Vyn
February 14, 2013

Converting Pastures to Forest in Hawai'i

By John Kessler
Last November while vacationing on Hawaii’s Big Island, I had the chance to spend a day with Jack

Birds connect us with the joy and wonder of nature. By telling vivid, sound-rich stories about birds and the challenges they face, BirdNote inspires listeners to care about the natural world – and take steps to protect it.

Support BirdNote

  • Daily Shows
  • Field Notes
  • BirdNote Presents
  • Sights & Sounds
  • About BirdNote
  • Contact BirdNote
Sign up for our newsletter!
  • BirdNote on Facebook
  • BirdNote on Twitter
  • BirdNote on Instagram

Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.

  • Privacy Policy