Sandpipers on an arduous migration now have a rest stop all their own

by Nanditha Chandraprakash on 6 February 2020

• The Rainforest Trust and the Bird Conservation Society of Thailand recently purchased 8 hectares (20 acres) of shoreland in the Gulf of Thailand to protect a vital stopover site for spoon-billed sandpipers (Calidris pygmaea).
• Spoon-billed sandpipers fly annually from Russia to parts of Southeast Asia and depend on sites like the salty coastal wetland of Pak Thale for survival 
• The species is critically endangered, with only about 240 to 456 adults globally.
• This stretch of shoreland along the Inner Gulf of Thailand is also an important migrating and wintering site for other waterbirds passing through Thailand.

For the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper, a tiny shorebird that makes an 8,000-kilometer (5,000-mile) migration each year, wetlands are vital stopover points. To boost the small bird’s population, the Rainforest Trust and the Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST) have purchased a stopover haven in the Gulf of Thailand from two banks for the species’ winter migration.

“The purchased land is currently an active salt pan which has supported a wintering population of spoon-billed sandpipers regularly every winter,” said Angela Yang, chief conservation officer of the Rainforest Trust.

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Critically Endangered Shorebird Travels Thousands of Miles to New Protected Area

December 3, 2019/in Blog /by Ethan Freedman

This year, Rainforest Trust and the Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST) purchased almost 20 acres of shoreline along Thailand’s Inner Gulf. This property, Pak Thale, is an important habitat for many migratory shorebird species, including the Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper.

The Spoon-billed Sandpiper is an incredible — and incredibly threatened — bird. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that only 240-456 mature sandpipers are still alive, anywhere in the world. Yes, you read that right. The entire species population is no more than 500 individual birds. For reference, that’s fewer than the number of Mountain Gorillas, one of the world’s most iconic threatened species, left in the wild.

But the species, like many other shorebirds, is also a prolific migrator. They breed up in the high Arctic, from the Russian Far East down through the Kamchatka Peninsula. From there, each fall, they migrate to their wintering grounds in southeast Asia. Along the way, they stop at shoreline habitat to rest and feed before continuing on their thousands-of-miles-long journey. Each of the sandpipers are essentially on their own for the whole journey. These little birds, just about six inches long, fly out over the ocean, migrating in an all-or-nothing battle for life against the elements.

And in the spring, they do it all in reverse.

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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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Spoonie’s winter wetland declared protected area

Nanthar Island, Myanmar is a crucial wintering site for the Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Critically Endangered). Thanks to the advocacy of BANCA (BirdLife in Myanmar) and local people, the site has now been designated a protected area.

As Spoonie wades along the shore of Nanthar Island in Myanmar, he uses his unique spatula-shaped beak to sift small invertebrates from the mudflats. Luckily for this little Spoonie, he is standing on protected ground, rich in food and safe from the threat of hunting. However, some of his friends aren’t so lucky. With a tiny population of no more than 456, and still in decline, the Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Critically Endangered) is just one step away from becoming extinct in the wild.

Nanthar Island is not a well-known site for the Spoon-billed sandpiper – but it is nonetheless an important one. Covering a fairly large area of approximately 3,600ha, the island and the nearby Mayyu Estuary in Rakhine state, Myanmar host up to 12% of the global population of Spoon-billed Sandpipers.

In 2008, surveys of the Nanthar area conducted by the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force confirmed this importance. Unfortunately, spoonies that use this habitat as a wintering site are often under threat from hunting by local people. The Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association (BANCA – BirdLife in Myanmar) has been working hard in the area to protect the unique bird from this pressing concern.

Tackling the problem at its source, BANCA assessed the socio-economic situation of the local people. From this, they were able to determine that most people did not really depend on shorebird hunting for their livelihoods, but instead used them to add variety to their own diets. To combat this problem, BANCA teamed up with local partner Rakhine Biodiversity and Nature Conservation Association, to conduct education and awareness activities.

5 February 2019

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Head-started Spoon-billed Sandpipers tracked on migration

05/11/2018

Co-ordinated efforts by conservationists, including the hand-rearing of chicks and ringing and tagging of birds, are giving researchers an unprecedented insight into the annual cycle of the Critically Endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper.

This autumn, a juvenile 'Spoonie', which was reared by a WWT conservationist in Russia as part of the organisation's long-standing 'head-starting' programme, was re-sighted by a colleague 5,000 km away in Jiangsu, China.

The young bird, known as 'White 4H' after the colour and code on its left flag, was raised in Russia in August by aviculturalist Jodie Clements. Then, a month after being released into the wild, Kane Brides observed the bird in the field in China, while monitoring shorebirds at a key site along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Accompanied by an international team of conservationists from the UK, New Zealand, Hong Kong and China, they caught a total of 15 Spoon-billed Sandpipers and observed 100 of the Critically Endangered waders among a large mixed-species flock, with White 4H being one of them. Kane said: "I can't believe we came across White 4H which my mate Jodie had helped care for four weeks earlier, in a completely different country. It's like finding a message in a bottle!"

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Land reclamation threatens extremely rare spoon-billed sandpipers in China

by Shreya Dasgupta on 14 December 2017

Every year, the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper makes a crucial three-month stopover at Tiaozini mudflats in Jiangsu province on China’s eastern coast.

The Jiangsu government, however, has already converted 67.5 square kilometers of Tiaozini’s coastal waters into land and plans to reclaim another 599.5 square kilometers of Tiaozini by 2020.

Conservationists say that virtually all spoon-billed sandpipers that currently use Tiaozini could disappear if the reclamation goes ahead as planned, pushing the species to extinction.

One of the world’s rarest birds — the tiny spoon-billed sandpiper — could soon lose a critical habitat to land reclamation projects, warns a new report by Greenpeace.

Every year, the reddish-brown spoon-billed sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus) makes a 5,000-mile long journey, flying from its breeding grounds in Arctic Russia to its wintering sites in places like southern China, Bangladesh and Myanmar. On the way, the bird makes a crucial three-month stopover at Tiaozini mudflats in Jiangsu province on China’s eastern coast.

This is the single most important site for the species, Nigel Clark of the British Trust for Ornithology told Mongabay. The birds rely on the mudflats and wetlands not only for their annual moult — a period when they replace all their wing feathers — but also to refuel and to find refuge. The coastal site is also important for the birds during their journey back to the Russian breeding grounds. Moreover, Tiaozini is a critical habitat for other endangered birds like the Nordmann’s greenshank (Tringa guttifer) and the black-faced spoonbill (Platalea minor).

The Tiaozini mudflats, however, could soon be gone.

Read on  

China’s key role in international fight to save one of rarest birds in the world from extinction

A wetland in Jiangsu province – a vital stopover for the spoon-billed sandpiper on its migration south from Siberia – needs protecting against development, one of a number of threats to a species with under 250 breeding pairs left

PUBLISHED : Saturday, 18 November, 2017, 6:18pm

UPDATED : Saturday, 18 November, 2017, 7:11pm

Ewen Mcleish

18 Nov 2017

Pavel Tomkovich spent the summer 300 kilometres below the Arctic Circle in Chukotka, an isolated coastal region of northeastern Siberia. Each day he packed hand-held flares and a pepper spray as protection against bears, and set off into the wilderness in search of a critically endangered bird – the spoon-billed sandpiper.

Tomkovich, head of the ornithological department of Moscow State University’s Zoological Museum, is part of the international Spoon-Billed Sandpiper Taskforce, involving Russia, China and a number of other countries fighting to save the species from extinction. With numbers falling from an estimated 1,000 breeding pairs at the turn of the millennium to fewer than 250 pairs in 2014, the taskforce is hoping efforts will lead to a 50 per cent increase in the population by 2025.

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On China’s Coast, Rare Bird Finds Little Room to Rest

The fate of one of the world’s most endangered birds is closely tied to the future of China’s disappearing coastal wetlands.

Shi Yi May 11 2016

It was the kind of news experts only believe if they see it with their own eyes: A man in China claimed he had spotted 100 spoon-billed sandpipers foraging on the muddy coast of the Yellow Sea.

The bird is so small that it would barely cover the hand of a grown woman. It is also so rare that a group of such a size would constitute a fifth of the worldwide population.

“Count them,” wrote Tong Menxiu, the man who found them. “Just in one photo there are dozens of them.” Tong is a birdwatcher from the eastern Chinese province of Fujian.

Every year around May, the tiny sandpiper migrates more than 8,000 kilometers south, from Arctic northeastern Russia through Japan, the Korean peninsula, and China, before arriving at its wintering grounds in Myanmar, Thailand, and Bangladesh. In the spring, it returns to Kamchatka and other coastal areas in Siberia.

Without the nourishing mudflats of coastal China along the way, especially around the eastern province of Jiangsu, the spoon-billed sandpiper wouldn’t be able to make such an arduous journey.

The chances that the bird will still exist in five years are already slim. If China isn’t on board in protecting it, sustaining the population becomes near impossible.

The chief problem is that China’s coastal wetlands are being destroyed on a large scale.

A year after Tong's discovery, in 2012, Christoph Zockler, a German researcher and expert with the Spoon-Billed Sandpiper Task Force, travelled to Jiangsu province, along with several other experts.

“We couldn’t believe him,” Zockler said, referring to Tong and his claims. “So we went and saw for ourselves that it was a huge number.”

The conservationists were thrilled. The bird, with its distinctive spatula-shaped bill, is one of the most endangered species in the world. In the 1970s, there were around 2,000 to 2,800 of them, but habitat loss and poaching have decimated the population.

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Endangered bird spotted in China's Hainan province

Last Updated: Friday, April 8, 2016 - 16:19

Beijing: A spoon-billed sandpiper was spotted in south China's Hainan province this week, the third time the endangered bird has been seen on the tropical island.

Luo Lixiang with the Xinying Mangrove National Wetland Park photographed the sandpiper on Wednesday while he was patrolling the park. He did not notice the rare bird till he checked the photos later at night, Xinhua reported.

Spoon-billed sandpipers are listed as "critically endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

There are fewer than 200 spoon-billed sandpipers living in the wild due to environmental degradation, according to Lu Gang, an expert with Kadoorie Conservation China.

"Spoon-billed sandpipers migrate to wetlands in southeast Asia every spring and autumn, and during the course they make stops in China's Jiangsu, Hainan and Guangdong provinces," Lu said.

In 2009, English birdwatcher Paul I. Holt and his assistant found a spoon-billed sandpiper in Hainan's Haikou city, the first time it was spotted on the island.

Another spoon-billed sandpiper was spotted in Hainan two years later.

source

Hand-reared spoon-billed sandpiper returns home to breed

An extensive hand-rearing programme, aimed at saving the highly endangered spoon-billed sandpiper, is celebrating the news that for the first time one has returned to its Russian ancestral grounds to breed, two years after she was released.

This is a major milestone for the programme, which is a collaboration between WWT, Birds Russia, Moscow Zoo and the RSPB working with colleagues from the BTO, BirdLife International, ArcCona and the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force.

It aims to give the chicks a head start to ensure they survive their crucial first days of life, and stabilise the species’ population, which is estimated at 100 breeding pairs in the wild.

The team carefully removed eggs from breeding grounds on the tundra of the Chukotka region in eastern Russia to be monitored, hatched and nourished in the nearby village of Meinypil’gyno before being released.

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Key moment looms in bid to save rare birds

By Western Daily Press | Posted: April 14, 2014

By Janet Hughes

It may be too late to save the dodo, but daring West Country ornithologists are on the verge of finding out if they have persuaded one of the most endangered species in the world to fall in love and mate.

The tiny spoon-billed sandpiper is hurtling towards extinction and has just been named at number 11 in the top 100 critically endangered species in the world.

But experts at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire are tricking a clutch of hand-reared birds into believing they are on the edge of the Yellow Sea in China so they start eyeing each other up before eventually pairing up and breeding in a fake Russia.

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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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Brad’s trip to Thailand in bid to help preserve one of the rarest birds in the world

Published: 8 Feb 2014 15:00

An ornithologist from Fermanagh has travelled half-way around the world in search of one of the rarest birds on Earth.

A spoon-billed sandpiper, one of the rarest birds in the world. Photograph by Gavin Thomas of the RSPB and Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force.

Brad Robson, from Monea, wanted to see a spoon-billed sandpiper “while it still exists”.

Tragically the little bird, no bigger than a sparrow, is heading the way of the dodo.

According to the WWT (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust): “The incredible spoon-billed sandpiper is hurtling towards extinction perhaps faster than any other bird species. Probably fewer than 100 pairs remain and the population is in free fall. Without urgent action, it will be gone within a decade.”

Brad is manager of the RSPB’s reserves on Lough Erne and spends much of his working life protecting surviving populations of once common wading birds like the curlew, lapwing and redshank.

The spoon-billed sandpiper is also a wading bird but is in much graver danger than any of our local species.

“They really are just hanging on by their toe nails,” says Brad.

Like the swallow, the spoon-billed sandpiper migrates over huge distances. It breeds on the Arctic tundra of north-east Siberia before flying 8,000 kilometres south, through Russia, Japan, Korea and China, to spend the winter in Bangladesh, Muyanmar and Thailand.

It was to Thailand that Brad and a group of fellow ornithologists headed last month in the hope of spotting one.

“We had been planning a trip to China for a number of years to see them there but it didn’t work out. Thailand is the easiest place to see them,” he explains.

Cotninued

A hand-reared sandpiper travels 8,000km

November 2013; A rare hand-reared spoon-billed sandpiper has been spotted for the first time in the wild, more than 8,000km from where it was released in Russia.

Twenty-five of the critically endangered birds have been raised over two years by an Anglo-Russia conservation team on the Russian tundra, before being released to join their wild-born counterparts in migrating to South-East Asia. However until now it was unknown whether any would be spotted until they return to Russia to breed aged two-years-old, so the news one has been seen in Thailand, on the coast near Bangkok, and another in southern China was welcomed.

Read on ...

Rare sighting of marked spoon-billed sandpiper on migration

Spoon-billed sandpiper spotted on migration 5000 kilometres from nesting location

September 2013. A rare sighting of a marked spoon-billed sandpiper on migration has been reported from Rudong mudflats north of Shanghai. The critically endangered bird was identified by a lime green plastic flag on its leg marked ‘01' that was attached by scientists from Birds Russia on its breeding grounds this summer. 

Major contribution to the survival of his species

Conservationists know that this bird ‘Lime 01' fathered six fledglings this summer - three that were hand-reared by conservationists and three that he raised himself - which is 10 times the average for the species.

In all, this summer sixteen hand-reared spoon-billed sandpiper fledglings and eight adults were marked with uniquely inscribed plastic leg flags. Birdwatchers are being asked to report all sightings of spoon-billed sandpipers.

Extremely important stop over site for the spoon-billed sandpiper

Coordinator of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force, Christoph Zöckler said: "The Rudong mudflats are an extremely important stop over site for the spoon-billed sandpiper to rest and feed and it is very exciting news that our Russian breeding birds have been sighted there. Unfortunately these mudflats, like much coastal wetland along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, are threatened by the development. Alongside illegal trapping and hunting, it has pushed these birds to the edge."

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British conservationists give rare spoon-billed sandpiper a helping hand

One of the world’s rarest birds has had its numbers boosted by a scheme to hand-rear chicks.

Spoon-billed sandpipers have been helped by British conservationists who worked with scientists in the bird’s native Russia where only 100 live in the wild.

They took the eggs from breeding pairs shortly after they were laid to encourage them to have another clutch. The eggs taken from the birds were hand-reared, boosting their numbers by 16.

The birds usually rear 60 young between them before their 8,000km (5,000-mile) annual migration to Burma.

‘The spoon-billed sandpiper needs a lifeline to keep them from going under,’ said Roland Digby, of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.

‘Each pair is lucky to get even a single chick as far as fledging. Normally that’s life, but right now the spoon-billed sandpiper needs a lifeline to keep them from going under.’

The spoon-billed sandpiper has been hit by loss of inter-tidal habitat in East Asia as they migrate south from their Russian breeding grounds.

Bird trapping by villagers in their wintering sites in Bangladesh and Burma has also affected numbers.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/08/23/british-conservationists-give-rare-spoon-billed-sandpiper-a-helping-hand-3935395/

20 Critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper chicks hatched by scientists

‘Headstarted' spoon-billed sandpipers hatch

July 2013. Twenty critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper chicks have hatched under expert care in the Russian Far East.

Conservationists took the eggs from the wild, in order to protect them from extreme weather and predators. The first hatched early last Wednesday morning and they continued until the last hatched on Sunday evening.

Threats

Numbers of spoon-billed sandpipers plummeted in recent years because of the destruction of wetland habitats and the effects of illegal trapping along their migration route.

Release after fledging

While tackling these problems, conservationists are boosting the productivity of the remaining breeding pairs by taking eggs from the wild, hatching and rearing them in captivity and releasing them once they have fledged.

Predators

Foxes, skuas and feral dogs take eggs and chicks from the wild, ground-nesting spoon-billed sandpipers and sudden changes in the weather can be fatal. Studies show that on average each pair lays four eggs per year but raises less than one chick.

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Spoon-billed sandpiper survival given hope by discovery of new site

January 2013. Four Spoon-billed Sandpipers were found at Fucheng, near Leizhou, south-west Guangdong Province in December 2012. Together with several other recent sightings this record indicates that Spoon-billed Sandpiper is a more widespread wintering species on the coast of southern China than was previously known. However, evidence was found of large-scale trapping of shorebirds and action is needed to address this threat.

The discovery was made by Jonathan Martinez and Richard Lewthwaite of Hong Kong Bird Watching Society during a project to investigate the winter distribution of Spoon-billed Sandpiper in southern China. They surveyed nine sites in south-west Guangdong and found the group of Spoon-billed Sandpipers in a large area of drained-down fishponds at Fucheng. This site is close to Zhanjiang, where the French ornithologist Pierre Jabouille described Spoon-billed Sandpiper as fairly numerous in winter in the 1930s, and where Professor Fasheng Zou of the South China Institute of Endangered Animals recorded three Spoon-billed Sandpipers in March 2003.

China sightings
Since 2005, there have been sightings of Spoon-billed Sandpiper during the winter months at several other sites in southern China, indicating that this is a more important wintering area for the species than was previously known. The northernmost wintering location is the Minjiang Estuary in Fujian, where a flock of Spoon-billed Sandpipers has regularly been present in recent winters. There have also been sightings of up to three birds at Xitao in south-west Guangdong, Mai Po in Hong Kong, Fangcheng and QinzhouBay in Guangxi and the Changhua Estuary in Hainan. The on-going project will carry out further surveys in Fujian, Guangxi and Hainan and will hopefully locate some more wintering Spoon-billed Sandpipers.

Continued:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/china-spoon-billed.html