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.
Obligatory bear photo from the Monument Marsh, 18 July 2017. Photo Roland Digby/WWT.

News from the Field: Moving to the release aviary and the obligatory bear photo

Update from Roland Digby On Friday 14 July, we finally got the first couple of broods of birds out into the release aviary. Because of the storm we couldn’t put the birds out as early as we’d hoped (Wednesday 12 July), so the first couple of broods were a bit older than th
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What’s happening at Slimbridge?

Update from Baz Hughes I think you might have all realised that there’s been a bit of blog silence on the Slimbridge spoonies so it’s time to update you. Put bluntly, we didn’t get eggs this year, but it wasn’t for lack of trying! Moult into summer plumage commenced in late February w
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Brooder with chicks of various ages after hatching, 8 July 2017. Photo by Roland Digby/WWT.

News from the Field: Eggs hatched and release pen ready to go

Update from Roland Digby At 15:30hrs on 10 July, our 30th and last chick hatched! Although we didn’t expect all 34 viable eggs to hatch, we had hoped for 32. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, with one dying just as it started to hatch and two others just before pipping,
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Ivan checking the 1st clutch of eggs in the hatcher to make sure all pips are on the tops of the eggs, 1 July 2017. Photo by Roland Digby/WWT.

News from the Field: Hatching update from 3 July

Update from Roland Digby (from 3 July 2017) On 1 July, clutch A pipped and were all moved from the Hemel incubator to the AB Newlife hatcher. As of 3 July, a total of 24 of the 34 viable eggs have pipped and been moved over and we expect the remaining 10 eggs in the incubators to pip
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Ivan and Yuri making the final collection on 24 June 2017. Photo by N. Yakushev.

News from the Field: 38 eggs!

On 24 June, the final clutch of eggs was collected from the plain at the foot of the moraine hills close to the village, making a total of 38 eggs collected. This is amazing because at one point earlier in the season when the floods were inundating territories (particularly in Angkavi
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Carefully negotiating the ice flows. Photo by Nigel Clark.

News from the Field: Three more spoonies have been tagged to track migration south to the Yellow Sea

With funding from the Mohamed bin Zayed Conservation Fund, Nigel Clark has gone to the Spoonie breeding grounds to fit satellite tags to three breeding birds in the hope that we can learn where they stop on their migration south to the Yellow Sea. For more information on how the Moham
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Yellow ET at the Minjiang Estuary, Fujian, China on 29 October 2016. Photo by Du Feng-luan / Fujian Bird Watching Society.

Technology coming to the aid of spoonie: finding the unknown

From Nigel Clark on behalf of the Satellite tagging team. In 2009, Rhys Green and I were tasked with assessing how we could use new technology to track Spoon-billed Sandpipers. We thought that this would be an easy task but the more we looked into how we could safely attach any tag th
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Headstarted White 0C, 11 June 2017.

News from the Field: The first eggs of 2017

The team has collected the first eggs of the season, many more flagged birds have been seen and flooding continues to cause problems. Here’s the latest from Russia. From Roland Digby We collected the first clutch of eggs this week – four eggs were collected from the nest o
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Read the latest news bulletin from the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force

The April 2017 edition of the Spoon-billed Sandpiper Task Force News Bulletin is available to read here. The contents are as below. Previous news bulletins are available on the SBS Task Force website. Foreword from the Editor Guest Editorial by Minister Min Kyi Win Workshop on SBS Nat
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Frozen flooded release site at Meinypil’gyno, 3 Jun 2017.

News from the Field: First update from the team

We’re very pleased to be able to share the first news from the field with you. Roland and the BirdsRussia team have been at the breeding grounds for almost a month now but have had a more limited internet connection than usual. Below is the first update we received and we’
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