AMAZING JOURNEY
BIRD’S FLIGHT FROM JAPAN:
A SMALL bird wandering the Cairns Esplanade with a tag on its leg has led a local birdwatcher to a surprising discovery.
Hidetoshi Kudo was watching wading birds at the northern end of the mudflats on November 5 when he spied a small migratory bird with a plastic band on its leg.
Mr Kudo, who always walks the Esplanade with his trusty pair of binoculars, was able to identify the wader as a red-necked stint.
The professional translator was also able to glean from the bird tag’s colour combination that it had originated in Japan.
After passing the information on to a statewide birdwatcher organisation, the Queensland Wader Study Group, he found the bird had actually originated from a part of Japan he used to live in.
Coincidentally, the person, who tagged the bird, was a scientist he had met several years ago while conducting a conservation study.
“How small could that chance be?” Mr Kudo said.
“This particular bird that I saw was captured and banded with two flags for scientific purposes by Mr Hosoya in Tor-No-Umi near Sendai, Japan, while the bird was stopping for rest and food in the long journey to Australia.”
Mr Kudo, who arrived in Australia from Tokyo about 16 years ago, is passionate about exploring the mangrove environment.
The citizen scientist has discovered three completely new species of mangrove trees in Cairns, including a new one, named dungarra orange mangrove – a previously unknown hybrid species of mangrove – at Machans Beach and Holloways Beach.