Spoon-billed sandpiper

The spoon-billed sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus), or spoonbill sandpiper, is one of the world’s rarest birds and it is in critical danger of extinction. Fortunately, efforts are being made to save it and there is a good chance that they will succeed.

  

Habitat

Spoon-billed sandpipers are coastal birds that never breed more than six kilometres from the sea. Their breeding sites, in north-east Russia, are carefully selected in sandy locations with sparse vegetation that is also close to mudflats for feeding purposes. The birds return to the same breeding site year after year.

They winter in south-east Asia and the Bay of Bengal, where they are found on coastal mudflats and saltpans. Their particular requirement is for very shallow water, such as on the outermost edges of river deltas.

However, only a few sites are regularly visited by the steadily dwindling population of birds, and some sites that were formerly home to spoon-billed sandpipers have not had any sightings in recent years.

Appearance

The spoon-billed sandpiper is 14-16 centimetres in length (5.5-6 inches) which is similar to that of a house sparrow. However, apart from its distinctive plumage, it could hardly be mistaken for a sparrow given its much longer legs and very unusual spatulate bill which it uses to search for food in shallow watery mud.

During the breeding season, adult birds (both males and females) have a reddish-brown head and upper body, streaked with brown, and are largely white below but with some brown speckling. The upperparts and wings are dark with brown and red edging to the wings.

At other times of the year the red colouring turns to brown and the upperparts to pale brown-grey with white trimming to the feathers.

Feeding

Spoon-billed sandpipers feed on small invertebrates which they find either by probing amongst low vegetation or by shovelling through the shallow mud with their specially adapted bills. Chicks feed mainly on insects and seeds.

Breeding

Spoon-billed sandpipers fly 5,000 miles between their winter and summer quarters, arriving in north-east Russia when the snows are still melting in late Spring. The males perform display flights to attract a mate above the intended nest site. The nest is only a scrape in the ground, where the female will lay three or four eggs which hatch between 19 and 23 days later.

After the chicks have hatched the family moves away from the nest site to a place where they can be fed in safety by both parents for around two weeks, by which time the chicks will have fledged. All the birds fly south in late August.

Although the parent birds will return north when the next breeding season arrives, the young birds will stay on the wintering grounds for a further year until they are ready to breed.

Conservation

Spoon-billed sandpipers face many threats, including loss of habitat and predation. They are dependent on having access to very specific locations for feeding and breeding, and it is these sites, particularly in the wintering areas, that are coming under most pressure from human activity. Many tidal mudflats have been reclaimed in recent years for industrial and aquaculture purposes, and there has been extensive pollution.

With rapidly growing human populations in south-east Asia, the hunting of birds for food has grown in intensity. It is not particularly spoon-billed sandpipers that are targeted, but they are caught in the nets that are used to gather wading birds of all species. Given the fact that the young birds spend a whole year on the wintering grounds, unlike the older birds that leave for the north every spring, a disproportionate number of younger birds are being caught which are thus not around to breed the following year.

The result of these pressures has been a dramatic fall in numbers of spoon-billed sandpipers since the 1980s with an 88% decline in numbers since 2002. Whereas some 2,500 birds were estimated as the worldwide population before 1980, a maximum of 200 pairs is believed to remain today, and the number may be as low as 100. Drastic action is therefore necessary to prevent the species becoming extinct.

One approach has been to protect the birds in their wintering grounds by seeking the help of local people. For example, at one of the wintering grounds in Burma alternatives to bird catching have been provided in the form of fishing nets donated by the British Trust for Ornithology.

A programme of captive breeding of spoon-billed sandpipers is also under way, the aim being to create a “safety net” population from which the wild population can be boosted, or the captively-bred birds can act as replacements should extinction occur. 

This consists of taking eggs from Russian nests, hatching them in incubators, then, after a 30-day quarantine period at Moscow Zoo, flying the chicks to Britain where they are raised at the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust’s headquarters at Slimbridge, Gloucestershire. The programme has already shown signs of success and there is a good chance that the spoon-billed sandpiper will not join the long list of bird species that have disappeared for good.

© John Welford