Once again, apologies for the intermittent and brief posts this week. For Nige and Nicky it has been full-on, 24 hours a day, looking after the rapidly growing chicks and checking the as-yet-unhatched eggs. So…what has been happening? Well, after the eggs arrived at Slimbridge l

This year I was gutted at not being part of the WWT team collecting the eggs as they had inconveniently arrived on a day I had “important meetings” so it was Rebecca Lee (Senior Species Conservation Officer), Sacha Dench (Head of Media) and Paul Marshall (our Web Manager) who got the

Many of you will have been anxious to hear some news today so our apologies for not posting sooner but things have been rather hectic! This is just a brief update to say that Nige and 20 Spoon-billed Sandpiper eggs arrived at Heathrow in the early hours of this morning. By mid-morning

We have learnt some very promising news regarding the sexes of our twelve strong flock of spoon-billed sandpipers. We were recently informed of the sexes of almost all of the birds which includes at least four females – hooray! This gives us a ratio of four females to seven males with

Our flock of spoon-billed sandpipers are showing clear signs of maturing. All the birds have started to moult from juvenile into their first winter plumage, which is a polished silvery white like a suit of armour. During a recent evening feed all the birds were being particularly nois

Enjoy this video of the birds enjoying a splash in the pool in their new room    

Nicky writes: It has been a particularly exciting week at spoon-billed sandpiper HQ. After a couple of weeks’ preparation work, the 2nd wintering room was ready for the birds to move into. The heaters were cranked up to optimum temperature, the heat lamps hung, the pool filled with ci

Nicky writes: I’ve just returned from handling all the sandpipers, something we do fortnightly to assess their physical condition and general well-being. The good news – we were happy with today’s health check. Nigel, Rebecca, Michelle – our resident vet – and I rounded up

By Nicky Hiscock, Conservation Breeding Assistant The sandpipers have been in their new home now for just over a month and they’re making good use of the surroundings we’ve carefully designed for them. The facility was built just in time for their arrival in 2011 and consists of two i

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