Conservation assessment of Far Eastern Oystercatcher Haematopus [ostralegus] osculans David S. Melvill e1, Yuri N. Gerasimo v2, Nial Moores 3, Yu Yat-Tun g4 & Qingquan Ba i5 11261 Dovedale Road, R.D. 2 Wakefield, Nelson 7096, New Zealand.
[email protected] 2Kamchatka Branch, Pacific Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Science, Rybakov 19a, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, 683024, Russia 3Birds Korea, 1108 Ho, 3 Dong, Samik Tower Apt., Namcheon 2 Dong, Su Young-Gu, Busan 613762, Republic of Korea 4c/o Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, 7C, V Ga Building, 532 Castle Peak Road, Lai Choi Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong 5Forestry Bureau of Dandong, Dandong, Liaoning, China 118000 Melville, D.S., Gerasimov, Y.N., Moores, N., Yat-Tung, Y & Bai, Q. 2014. Conservation assessment of Far Eastern Oystercatcher Haematopus [ostralegus] osculans. International Wader Studies 20: 129 –154. The Far Eastern Oystercatcher Haematopus [ostralegus] osculans is a little-known taxon, with an estimated total population of about 11,000 birds. The disjunctive breeding range extends along the west coast of the Kamchatkan Peninsula to Shelikov Bay at the head of the Sea of Okhotsk, and from the west and south coasts of the Korean Peninsula south to Fujian Province, China. During the summer a few birds occur from the Amur River delta south along the coasts of Khabarovsk and Primorsky regions, and inland in the central Amur region and northeast China, but few are thought to breed there. It is nowhere common. It winters mainly along the west coast of the Korean Peninsula and the coast of East China from southern Shandong Province to as far south as northern Guangdong Province.