It’s with great pride and sadness that we announce the successful breeding of the first spoonie chick at Slimbridge and the first ever anywhere in the world, however the bird has sadly died.
Just as we were about to officially announce the news, it died of a tragic flying injury that could not have been prevented.
Despite the misfortunate outcome, the spoonie’s arrival sparks a significant breakthrough in conservation breeding.
It is the result of eight years of hard work, perfecting conditions to allow the world’s only captive flock of spoonies to breed.
Due to their extreme lifestyles – they migrate from tropical Asia to Arctic Russia to breed – the team were faced with a huge challenge. After doing their best to recreate that experience in the aviaries here – using special lightbulbs, timer switches and diet analysis, they finally made a breakthrough this summer.
The “arked” population at Slimbridge was established in 2011 in case time ran out to save the bird in the wild. All along its migratory route, spoonies are threatened by illegal hunting and human encroachment of important mudflats.
However since then, there are signs that the wild population may be starting to recover thanks to the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force working across the birds’ range from Russia to China to Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Learning from the experience of breeding birds at Slimbridge, a head-starting programme for spoon-billed sandpipers has been underway in Russia since 2012, involving the collection of eggs from incubating birds in the wild, hatching and hand-raising the chicks in captivity to fledging age, and releasing the birds back into the wild. Skipping the particularly risky incubation and rearing phases helps protects the eggs and increases the chicks chances of survival. This technique has boosted the number of young spoon-billed sandpipers bred each year in the wild by a quarter – 163 birds have been released so far.
There are many positives to be taken from the significant developments of this year.
Our dedicated, hard-working team have done a brilliant job, earning a world’s first in the process. There are a lot of real positives to build on and I’m sure their professionalism and first-class expertise will lead to greater successes in the future.
Don’t be disheartened, you are doing a great job. Keep on Keeping on and you will be successful in the end. Peter Scott would be proud of you.
In 1937 Lord Tavistock wrote that “X, the evil spirit who specializes in blasting the fondest hopes of aviculturalists, was, as usual, well to the fore and on every occasion which afforded real scope to his inventive genius for destruction or misplaced humour, he did not fail to rise to the opportunity!”
This year’s result was a major achievement. X is obviously still active, but if anyone can defeat him next year it’s you guys.
Thanks for your kind comments
Hi All at the breeding Centre and behind the scenes at Slimbridge.
Congratulations on doing an absolutely amazing job by getting a spoonie chick as far as you did. You are absolutely amazing and PLEASE don’t be too downhearted because the chick is absolutely beautiful showing that you did him/her incredibly well.
You deserve A World First Gold Medal for being the only people in the world to successfully breed this wonderful, difficult, little bird in captivity.
What an adorable photo of the youngster. Thank you so much for sharing it with us all.
Sir Peter must be SO proud of you all because you have proved once again that Slimbridge and WWT is an absolutely amazing organisation of fantastic people.
Helena
Well Done all the team for a great job done..
Peter Soper
Hope these birds migrate to Indian Peninsula in near future!