Spoon-billed Sandpipers at the Royal Ontario Museum
Skins of Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus)
At last week’s visit to the ROM ornithological archives i discovered some 20 skins of Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus) in the collection. This shorebird species, with its unusually shaped bill, is critically endangered, so it was touching to see so many dead birds. These specimens of course were collected a long time ago, before the species was known to be endangered.
Spoon-billed Sandpipers in non-breeding plumage
Looking closer at the tags attached to the skins revealed that these specimens were all captured in Japan, many of them from the island of Hokkaido. Today the only know over-wintering sites are in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Only a few hundred birds are thought to be remaining in the world.
Most birds were collected in Sep-Oct during 1904-1911 in Hokkaido, Japan
If you haven’t already seen this amazing video of this rare species displaying at the breeding grounds on the Chukotsk peninsula (Russia) in June 2010 I can highly recommend it.
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