$1,000 reward offered for Slender-billed curlew photos

18/07/2009 15:29:17 Critically endangered Slender-billed curlew search in the Middle East
July 2009. Four members of the Cley Bird Club in North Norfolk, UK, are offering a total of $1,000 for any photograph of a live Slender-billed Curlew taken in the Middle East. Because of the identification challenges posed by the species any photograph will have to be verified by the SBC Indentification Verificion Panel, which comprises wader experts with past experience of the species. A full survey and search for this species is planned for next winter.

The Cley Bird Club hope that $500 will go to the photographer and $500 to a conservation cause in the country where the photograph was taken.

Already two photographs have been submitted - taken in Iraq last winter - but sadly they were not proven to be Slender-billed Curlew, but is very encouraging that Iraqi birders are trying to find the bird. The last confirmed sighting of a Slender-Billed curlew in the wild, anywhere in the world, was in Hungary in 2001, though there have been unconfirmed reports from the Western Palearctic, Italy, Greece and Albania.