Mike Smart

Our in house Curlew expert, Mike Smart has been watching birds in Gloucestershire since boyhood. After birding for ten years in Tunisia and two in Iran, he returned to Gloucestershire in 1974 to work for the International Waterfowl Research Bureau (now Wetlands International) at Slimbridge, then spent seven years in Switzerland at IUCN headquarters with the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. Mike is now involved with local conservation activities with the Gloucestershire Naturalists’ Society and the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, and continues to watch waders in the Severn Estuary and Vale. Mike’s considerable background in wader conservation is at the heart of the work we do at Curlew Action.

mikesmart
A photo of a stretch of water and land beneath a blue sky

An annual migration of wading bird scientists

This is the first of two blog posts about the IWSG conference, read the second post by Mary Colwell about her talk. The International Wader Study Group (IWSG) is the principal European organisation dedicated to waders; the American counterpart is the Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN). IWSG was established some 50 years ago, mainly […]

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A photo of a Eurasian Curlew walking through water, with mud and water dripping from its long, curved bill

Colour-ringed Curlews on the Usk estuary

Curlew expert and Curlew Action trustee Mike Smart shares an update on colour-ringed Curlew sightings from his local patch on the Usk, how colour-ringing is helping ornithologists to understand Curlew movements, and requests sightings and photographs of colour-ringed Curlews on the Usk. Current status of Eurasian Curlew A British Birds article in 2015 [PDF available via

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