Many thanks to everyone who made it to Slimbridge yesterday. It was fantastic to see so many people turn up in person on a cold winter day. Martin McGill, Roland Digby and Nige Jarrett spoke to a packed room about the ups and downs of the birds’ incredible journey. Look at the F

Please join us and our Vice-President Kate Humble for a very special event on Monday 19 December, which will include the first chance to glimpse the spoon-billed sandpipers in the UK. Kate will unveil a live CCTV link up with the specially-constructed Slimbridge aviary, which is now t

Nicky Hiscock, WWT’s conservation breeding assistant has been caring for the spoon-billed sandpipers since they arrived in the UK. We’ve posted some more footage from the CCTV cameras that monitor the birds below and you can see Nicky going in with the birds. She’s described for us th

Nige reports: At this half-way stage of their quarantine period, we’re really pleased with how the birds are doing. They are feeding, drinking, bathing and loafing just as they should be. When the birds arrived they were understandably a little unsettled. In the first few days wheneve

Baz Hughes, WWT’s Head of Species Conservation writes: Wow. What a day we had on Friday! I couldn’t sleep the night before. I woke up at 5.30am thinking how would 13 tiny little Spoon-billed Sandpipers cope with being boxed up for 17 hours and flown from Moscow to Heathrow and t

Since the birds’ stay in Moscow has been prolonged, Nige and Roland have been taking it in turns to oversee their care in Moscow. Nige returned to Moscow at the weekend and reports that yesterday the birds were checked over by the Moscow Zoo vet. She listened to their breathing with a

Commenting on spoon-billed sandpiper story in The Guardian and picked up in the Readers’ Room, reader mjback makes the comment: Am I being cynical or do I detect a faint whiff of speciesism here? Would the same effort have been made if the bird didn’t have an interestingly

We’re very sorry to say that, having expected the birds back in the UK on 13 October, they have been delayed in Moscow. Our apologies to anyone reading The Guardian yesterday, who will have read that they did arrive. Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get the message to the editorial t

Nigel reports: I flew to Moscow on  1 October to relieve Roland, who’s been looking after the birds pretty much on his own while they’ve been in quarantine at Moscow zoo. I arrived just before 4pm. I collected my luggage, in which were dismantled crates we’re going t

Nigel writes: It’s been a tense and stressful couple of weeks, preparing for the arrival of the birds to the UK – so, apologies that we’ve been a bit quieter than usual on the blog with the latest developments. The young spoon-billed sandpiper chicks are now half way through the