Before you know it, it’s Feb 15! It’s the start of a new godwit year.
At the moment of writing, the birds are congregating in their usual, massive numbers in Portugal and Spain. In The Netherlands, the only sparse godwits we’re seeing are of the Islandic subspecies, L. l. islandica.
This year, the question ‘when will the first ‘real’ godwits reach The Netherlands?’, is more thrilling than ever. The people behind the initiative ‘King of the meadows’, created an original crowdfunding on http://www.waarisamalia.nu. Whoever predicts the date of arrival of the transmitter godwit ‘Amalia’ the best, wins a trip to the site where this bird was at the time of prediction. It is, therefore, worthwile to send in your prediction as soon as possible, to make the trip potentially very spectacular.
When you only know godwits as birds that gather in pairs of small groups over the meadows, the sight of a huge flock of godwits is nothing less than breath taking. (the accompanying picture was taken last year, on the banks of the river Tajo, near Lissabon.) This crowdfundig involves, of course, more than just the personal joy of visiting the godwits in Iberica. When your fill in your prediction, you will be asked to donate to the research project as well. This way, you’ll be able to help the research project around the godwits to stay alive. If you want to know instead of guess how to keep the godwits going, there’s no other option than to continue the quest.
