Korea in autumn is still perhaps the most accessible place in the world to see Spoon-billed Sandpipers: by the end of August 2002, 6 had already been seen at Saemangeum. Alarmingly, though, they were all adults, a trend that is becoming increasingly marked. Nial Moores found only three juveniles in a flock of 78 in September three years ago, for example, and Dr Park Jin-young also found just three juveniles in a flock of 210 at the same time. On the 10th September 15 Spoon-billed Sandpipers were seen - all but one were adults. No juveniles at all were seen last year…
Pavel Tomkovich in a mail to Birds Korea in August said that following a recent survey in northern Russia he had estimated that the Spoon-billed Sandpiper population at the survey site had declined by 2.5x in 15 years and that they’d totally disappeared from other surveyed sites, despite there still being suitable breeding habitat. He concluded that predation of eggs by Arctic Foxes and the loss of staging areas are probably the main causes of the decline. With perhaps less than 1000 breeding pairs remaining, and with the sea-wall at Saemangeum now over 60% completed, there seems no doubt at all that we are on the brink of losing one of the world’s most charismatic birds...
An interesting follow-up was the news posted on the OrientalBirdinglisterver by Minoru Kashiwagi on 9th September 2002 of a juvenile Spoon-billed Sandpiper found on the 8th in Tokyo Bay at Yatsu - a small tidal-flat within Tokyo itself - which had been flagged this summer at Belyaka Spit on the same expedition Pavel had mailed us about. The numbers of Spoon-billed Sandpipers being seen in Japan have fallen sharply (though at Daijugarami in Saga 3 juveniles were seen this year, 2 on September 23 and 1 on October 6, and 2 were seen at the same site last year (Atle Ivar Olsen pers comm), and the bird attracted many visitors.
During its stay the bird came amazingly close to photographers, birders, and interested members of the public, and superb images of this bird, taken on September 11th in "Sanbanse", Tokyo Bay were posted on Katsuyuki KON’s website.(Thanks to IKENAGA Hiroshi.)
The images were so good that not only was the blue flag clearly visible on the right leg, but so was a metal ring on the left leg.
Details of the flag and ring (SKVA and the numbers 02 and 58) were sent to Moscow by Minoru.
These details confirmed that the bird had indeed been flagged by the expedition. The letters were part of the word "MOSKVA" ("Moscow"), and the numbers identified as ring number FS00258: the bird was therefore ringed as a chick from "Nest 5" at 21:30 on July 10 2002.
Information like this is vitally important: not only can key staging areas for specific populations of threatened shorebirds be recognised and protected, but the public interest that was generated by being able to identify an individual bird in this way will be long-lasting and hopefully will prompt any further observations to be recorded properly.
Without information, without public support, and without protection of key staging sites, we will lose the Spoon-billed Sandpiper.
Please remember that any sightings of flagged shorebirds should be sent to the relevant research groups - or alternatively send them to us and we will gladly forward them to the correct people.