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.

News from the Field: Hatching begins

Update from Jodie Clements (3 July 2019) In early July, chicks were hatching left, right and centre! And with new life, came new challenges… The first chick hatched on 1st July, the earliest to hatch in the rearing house since headstarting in Meina began. During incubation, natural or
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News from the field: Busy, busy, busy!

Update from Jodie Clements (24 June 2019) In addition to the eggs in the last post, another 4 eggs were collected. These came from K6 and his unmarked partner. This clutch was quite intriguing with the eggs appearing larger than normal, especially once put in the incubator with the ot
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Spoony and friends – the breeding waders of Meina

Blog from Guy Anderson (Nature Recovery Unit, RSPB) While searching for spoonies on the tundra around Meina, we often bump into other waders rushing through their short breeding season. Some of these share much of their year with our spoony friends. Red-necked, Long-toed and Temminck’
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News from the field: Collection Complete

After a slow start locating spoonie pairs, relentless searching (and a bit of luck) enabled us to find several more pairs and 9 clutches were collected for headstarting. The incubator now has 34 precious Spoonie eggs developing within it! By collecting eggs this early in the season it
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News from the Field: Where are the missing blogs?

They’re on their way! We’ve had a few problems posting this year but the team have still been compiling them and we now have four installments ready for you that will be posted over the next couple of days. Our sincere apologies there’s been a delay but we hope you e
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Slimbridge Spoonies: They hatched, they grew, they fledged!

Update from Jodie Clements After what felt like an eternity, the eggs had finally been incubated long enough to see whether or not they were fertile… we had some concerns over fertility as no obviously successful copulations had been witnessed. You may be thinking, well this is a priv
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