Next month BirdLife International, a global partnership of 115 organizations working to protect birds and their habitats, will mark its 100th anniversary by holding the BirdLife World Congress in London. The event will bring together scientists, conservationists, and other stakeholders from around the world. BirdLife has a lot to celebrate on its 100th birthday. It […]
Tag: Spoon-billed Sandpiper
New study quantifies impact of hunting on migratory shorebird populations
Habitat loss and climate change are often blamed for the decreasing numbers of migratory shorebirds in a major flyway in the Asia-Pacific region in recent years. But it might be time to add another likely suspect: hunting. More than 50 million waterbirds from more than 250 different populations use the East Asian-Australasian Flyway (EAAF), a […]
Shorebirds can no longer count on the Arctic as a safe haven for rearing their young
A new analysis of over 70 years’ worth of shorebird population data suggests that climate change has altered the migratory birds’ Arctic safe haven to such a degree that it is now helping drive rapid declines in their numbers. After studying data from 38,191 nests found across all seven continents and belonging to 237 populations […]
South-East China – 24th April (Day 3)
Our first full birding day and we were raring to go, we were up at 05:00 and into the bus by 05:30 we were on site at the Dongtai seawall by 05:45 where we had breakfast of banana, Snicker’s bars and various bread with hot sweet coffee on the seawall. Scanning during our breakfast produced […]
POLL: Should we give up half of the Earth to wildlife?
The orangutan is one of our planet’s most distinctive and intelligent creatures. It has been observed using primitive tools, such as the branch of a tree, to hunt food, and is capable of complex social behaviour. Orangutans also played a special role in humanity’s own intellectual history when, in the 19th century, Charles Darwin and […]
Land reclamation threatens extremely rare spoon-billed sandpipers in China
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 […]
Endangered sandpipers lay eggs in captivity for the first time
One of the world’s rarest birds has laid eggs in captivity for the first time, in what wildlife experts say provides new hope for the species’ tiny wild population. Only around 200 breeding pairs of critically endangered spoon-billed sandpipers remain in the wild, where they make an annual 10,000 mile round-trip between their Russian Arctic […]
New hope for spoon-billed sandpipers as hand-reared bird heads for breeding grounds
Good news this World Migratory Bird Day; the first of a hand-reared group of critically endangered birds has been spotted migrating back towards where it was hatched by conservationists. The tiny spoon-billed sandpiper – the only bird in the world to hatch with a spoon shaped beak – could be down to fewer than a […]