Revisiting Spoon-billed Sandpipers
01 Mar 2016
I have just got back from a repeat bird survey of the Gulf of Mottama in Myanmar where I lead an international team of wader researchers (Guy Anderson from RSPB, Geoff Hilton from WWT, James Phillips from NE, David Melville and Chris Kelly) working with Ornithologists from BANCA which is the Myanmar Birdlife partner. The aim of the expedition? To resurvey the upper estuary which holds very large numbers of waders and is a hotspot for wintering Spoon-billed Sandpipers.
This was the sixth intensive survey that BTO have been involved in since the first in 2009, so everything should have been familiar, but as with every other visit the estuary had changed shape dramatically. The main channel is rather like a snake which is constantly on the move. When I first visited it was not long after a major change of the main channel from one side to the other. This meant that there were no mature saltmarshes in the middle but each time I go the saltmarshes get more intricate as channels erode great fissures in what was a new saltmarsh in 2010. We went out in 8 local traditional fishing boats where we ate and slept for the duration of the survey, the boats moving on at each high tide. The navigational skills of the boatmen ware amazing, taking us to the exact agreed point without the aid of our GPS devices! But they are finding the estuary an increasingly unpredictable place with new channels changing water flows. On one day I set off to survey a 5km long mudflat that was about 500m wide and looked suitable for spoonies on the satellite image that was only two weeks old. After an hour of walking through very soft mud I got there exhausted, and was flabbergasted when I found that the mudflat had gone and there was a steep cliff from the marsh straight into the main channel! This may be the start of a major channel shift, only time will tell.
These dramatic changes have lead to some remarkable changes in some of the larger waders. In past surveys they were concentrated in the lower estuary but they have moved to the inner estuary in big numbers. Almost every species had increased; Redshank three-fold, Curlew six-fold and Whimbrel from rare to present on virtually everybody’s count each day. In the past these would have been hunted extensively but work by BANCA has given the hunters alternative livelihoods, so we hope that these populations can go from strength to strength.
When we first went to Myanmar very few ornithologists had ever been on the estuaries as most of the work had focused on the forests which are of world importance. It is really heartening to return to work with a team of now local expert wader surveyors and to help more young birdwatchers become wader surveyors. They hold the key to future conservation of waders in Myanmar.
Last year we were surprised that we did not find any of the individually marked spoonies from the main breeding site at Meinypil’gyno in the Russian arctic. This year we made up for it by finding at least three individuals among the 6 sightings of flagged birds. One of these was headstarted last summer and we hope it will enter the breeding population in a couple of years. The other was ringed as a chick in 2010 and caught again on the nest at Meinypil’gyno last summer, having a lime flag (24) added at the time. It was next seen in the autumn at Tiaozini mudflats on the Jiangsu coast in China. This site is earmarked for a major land claim project soon, which will wipe out a critical stopover for spoonies like Lime 24. The movements of Lime 24 show the need for every link in the chain to be protected if the species is to survive.
Surveys like this are extremely expensive to undertake, and in addition to the support from RSPB and WWT we were lucky to have a major donation from an anonymous BTO supporter who wanted to help spread the BTO method of conservation through sound science. Many of the international team used their annual leave to take part in what we all felt was a successful expedition on many fronts.
Nigel Clark
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