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.

Thursday 7 March 2019

Coastal area revival boosts arrival of a critically endangered bird in China


18:32, 11-Feb-2019
Alok Gupta
One of the world's rarest migratory birds, barely a few steps away from extinction -- Spoon-billed Sandpiper -- has been sighted at various coastal areas in China.
Around 26 individuals were spotted at seven protected areas of southern China, a joint survey by the Mangrove Conservation Foundation (MCF) and Center for East Asian Australasian Flyway Studies (CEAAF), completed early last month, found.
Declared critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), less than 650 Spoon-billed Sandpipers survive in various parts of the world.
Tiny in size, these birds undertake an annual marathon migration of 7,000 kilometers to breed. En route to their breeding grounds, they make a three-month stopover at Tiaozini mudflats in east China's Jiangsu Province to moult -- a process of replacing wing feathers -- before continuing their journey to Russia.  
According to the survey, 13 birds were sighted in the Leizhou Peninsula located at the southernmost tip of the Chinese mainland. 
One Spoon-billed Sandpiper each was spotted in Yangjiang City in south China's Guangdong Province, Beihai City in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Zhao'an County in east China's Fujian Province. 
Six birds were seen in the Chinese coastal city of Fangchenggang, southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. 
Two birds each were observed in east China's Fujian Minjiang delta and Qinzhou City in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. 
"The sighting covers about 3.7 percent of the bird's total population. Such a large presence of Spoon-billed Sandpiper is due to China's ban on reclamation that has revived its wintering ground," Yifei Jia, a post-doctoral researcher with the School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, told CGTN.

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