‘Critically Endangered’ Spoon-billed Sandpiper Spotted in Hainan Bay

The spoon-billed sandpiper is rarer than the giant panda.

Nandu Daily reported on February 4th (reporter Hu Chengyong/writer Chen Zhengping/photo Chen Zhengping), on February 2nd, Hainan's ecological public forest ranger Chen Zhengping recorded the highly anticipated species within the avocets – the spoon-billed sandpiper (yù) – while patrolling the mangrove forests in Xin Ying Town, Hainan Bay.

The spoon-billed sandpiper is classified as 'Critically Endangered' by the IUCN (Red List of Threatened Species), with a global population of only a few hundred, rarer than the giant panda. They concentrate on breeding in the Arctic region every summer, and migrate to coastal wetlands in South Asia and Southeast Asia for wintering. Spoon-billed sandpipers have been recorded in Hainan for 5 times before, each time finding 1-2 individuals.

Spoon-billed sandpipers have short legs, with grey-white vertical stripes on their backs, and most notably, their small black beak is in a spoon-shaped form, which looks cute and silly. Due to their small stature, even adult birds are no more than 15cm in size, and there are several similar-looking bird species with similar habits, so it is difficult to find them in the mudflats. Many birdwatchers have long dreamed of seeing a spoon-billed sandpiper, but this often requires 'bird luck'.

On February 1st, Chen Zhengping discovered a spoon-billed sandpiper while it was resting in a large group of avocets by the water's edge, but because he forgot to put a storage card in his camera, he didn't capture the 'extremely endangered cute bird' at the time. Fortunately, the next morning, when Chen Zhengping returned to Xin Ying Salt Field to search, he finally found the little guy with a beak like a key.