Spoon-billed Sandpiper

Overview

The spoon-billed sandpiper (Calidris pygmaea) is a small wader that breeds on the coasts of the Bering Sea and winters in Southeast Asia. Classified as Critically Endangered, this species has experienced a significant population decline since the 1970s, with current estimates suggesting fewer than 2,500 mature individuals.

Identification

• Bill: Possesses a distinctive spatulate bill with a tip breadth of 10–12 mm.
• Plumage: Breeding adults feature a red-brown head, neck and breast with dark brown streaks, and blackish upperparts fringed in buff and pale rufous; non-breeding adults lack reddish tones, showing pale brownish-grey upperparts with whitish fringing and white underparts.
• Size and Legs: Measures 14–16 cm in length and has black legs.
• Vocalisation: Contact calls include a quiet 'preep' or shrill 'wheer', while the display song is an intermittent buzzing and descending trill described as 'preer-prr-prr'.

Habitat

Breeding habitat consists of sea coasts and adjacent hinterland on the Chukchi Peninsula and the Kamchatka Peninsula, where nests are situated in tundra grass near freshwater pools. The species migrates through Japan, Korea and China to winter in south and southeast Asia, including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore.

Diet

Forages by walking forward with its head down and employing a side-to-side movement of the bill. Diet includes tundra moss, small invertebrates such as mosquitoes, flies, beetles and spiders, and marine invertebrates like shrimp and worms.

Did you know?

The species is estimated to be on the verge of extinction, with predictions that it may disappear within 10 to 20 years due to rapid population decline. A conservation effort in the United Kingdom involved headstarting chicks in Slimbridge to increase survival rates from less than 25% to over 75%.