Headstarting is a collaborative effort between WWT, BirdsRussia and the RSPB, and occurs as part of the International Arctic Expedition mounted each year by BirdsRussia under the leadership of Dr. Evgeny Syroechkovskiy.

An update from Baz

As you all might have guessed by now, Nige and the eggs are in Moscow waiting for a flight back to the UK.After a very tense week … largely incommunicado … we are now back in contact – planning the logistics of flying the spoon-billed sandpiper eggs back to the UK. You might thi
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Another text update from Nige

09:18, Thursday 28 June @ Yakutsk airport Liza T. and I are now with the eggs in Yakutsk airport after flying for 3 hours. The plane is refuelling (takes 1.5 hours). We’ve another 6.5 hrs fly time to Moscow. There have been one or two bumps along the way … we can only hope the baby SB
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Liz hands over to Nigel before the flight

Incubating eggs safely landed in Anadyr

Today was miraculous: for the third time in the expedition, the helicopter flew as originally scheduled. This time, for the 1.5 hour flight from Meinypil’gyno to Anadyr, the helicopter carried the incubator, attached to a battery, and with a full complement of eggs. The charge of the
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Text messages from Nige – it’s all systems go!

17:52 (BST), Saturday 23 June @ Moscow Zoo Text message: I’m at zoo. Got through customs without a hitch. They x-rayed my bags but let me through. Please let all of our support team at Slimbridge know.   14:56 (BST), Sunday 24 June @ Departures lounge, Sheremetyevo Airport, Mosco
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Poster from Myanmar to Meiny School c Baz Scampion

Meinypil’gyno school and an incubator full of eggs

The team met with the schoolkids today. Sayam showed some funny shots of children playing in Bangladesh, as well as short video clips of mangrove delta Spoon-billed Sandpiper habitat, and bare feet walking on a sucky mudflat. This last clip raised giggles from these tundra-raised kids
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First fresh salmon c C Zockler

Camping in the West

We cross the First River several times at different locations with a small rubber boat to get our luggage and three people across to the coastal spit. Egor waits for us at a spot across from the end of the west end of the spit with the quad bike that had been transported earlier with
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Arctic Hare c Phil Palmer

An amazing day!

Today was just one of those days. Cold, drizzly and a long chilled hike to Ankavye, an area that has become my local patch. Ankavye is a hard area to work as the colder weather here makes things happen a week later than in Meinypil’gyno. Together with various team members, we had alre
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Beautiful Veins c R D Smith

Beautiful veins

The past four days have been particularly tense and nerve-wracking for me.  On Friday I set the first clutch of spoon-billed sandpiper eggs in the Hemel incubator (the same machine that was causing grief in an earlier post, but has now been coaxed into running at a stable 37.5°C).  Em
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Two new pairs of birds and one new pair of team members

Good news: two new pairs of Spoon-billed Sandpipers were found over the last two days. Sayam and Tom found one in the western delta with a female ready to lay, and Phil and I found one on a spit on the south shore of Piculnej Lake, where they have never been recorded. Today the first
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Transporting the first clutch

First Clutch

The day’s plan of beginning to construct the release aviary were disrupted mid-morning when Nikolay found us to say he had a complete clutch of four eggs and their incubation had begun. Richard H., Liz B. and I piled in the buggy with Nikolay driving and the portable incubator plugged
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