As regular CFZ-watchers will know, for some time Corinna has been doing a column for Animals & Men and a regular segment on On The Track... particularly about out-of-place birds and rare vagrants. There seem to be more and more bird stories from all over the world hitting the news these days so, to make room for them all - and to give them all equal and worthy coverage - she has set up this new blog to cover all things feathery and Fortean.

Saturday 15 March 2014

RARE BIRDS: Captive-bred Spoon-billed Sandpiper seen in winter quarters

Posted on: 11 Mar 2014


A hand-reared Spoon-billed Sandpiper from the WWT's reintroduction scheme in Russia has been seen in Thailand.

The bird was photographed last week by birder Peter Ericsson on wetlands at Pak Thale in Thailand and identified as bird ‘AA’, which was hand-reared and released in Chukotka, Russia, last summer, as part of an international effort to save the species from extinction.

Spoon-billed Sandpiper is one of the rarest birds in the world, and is consequently one of the most difficult to find once it leaves its breeding area for the winter months. This is only the secondtime an individual hand-reared bird has been identified in the wild by the unique code on its plastic leg flag, proving beyond doubt that this bird was AA. Last autumn there were three sightings of birds with white leg flags, indicating that they had been reared as part of the programme, but they were too distant for the codes to be read; however, a bird known as 'Lime 01' was also seen and identified.


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