Spoonies in the Arctic – update from Russia

Guy Anderson

Meinypil’gyno is a harsh place to live. A fishing village on the coast of Chukotka, Russia’s far eastern province, just across the Bering Straits from Alaska, and just under the Arctic Circle. For eight months of the year, this is a place of ice, snow and savage winds. Rows of multicoloured but otherwise identical single storey houses sit on low stilts in neat rows on a wide shingle ridge. 

The residents go about their business between the rows on quad bikes or venerable-looking motorbikes with side-cars. They are joined by a few 4x4s in various states of repair. To get out of the village to somewhere else requires the bone-shaking 90 minute scheduled (once a fortnight) helicopter service to the Province capital, Anadyr, or a much longer boat trip. There is no tarmac here. 

Each year since 2011 – with support from RSPB, WWT and others - Meinypil’gyno has hosted a team of dedicated researchers and conservationists playing an important part in the fight to save the spoon-billed sandpiper. It proved the ideal base for headstarting – hatching eggs and raising chicks in captivity before releasing them at fledging. By removing most natural causes of nest failure, this boosts the average number of chicks fledged per pair per year five-fold.  

To date the team has reared and released over 160 spoonie chicks. I have joined the team this year to help them with the class of 2019.

First find your breeding spoonies – no easy task. Spoonies are very small – stint size. The tundra here is very very big. In a strip of coastline about 40km long – basically as far as you can get from Meinypil’gyno without having to resort to a boat - there are less than 20 pairs known. Thankfully, experienced Russian ornithologists have been studying spoonies here since 2001 and have good instincts as to where to look and a history of known territories. When spoonies first arrive back on their breeding grounds in early June, they are pretty vocal – lots of displaying, lots of singing. If you have been lucky enough to hear singing Dunlin, that’s pretty similar - a magical bubbling trilling.

This is a golden opportunity to locate pairs. In a week or so – which is now, as I’m writing – they are already getting down to egg-laying and will become much quieter and harder to find very soon. The even more difficult business of nest finding is already well underway. So my first week here has been frantic – covering as much ground as possible. The birds have no choice but to hurry up. In less than 3 months, they must be gone, as the brief arctic summer will be over. Everything is in a rush here – gulls, ducks and geese flying to and from nests, tundra flowers blooming before your eyes, bumblebees and a few hardy butterflies zooming around in seemingly impossibly chilly winds. 

We already have our first few early clutches of spoony eggs in the incubator for headstarting. A good start. This early in the season, the donor pairs will likely relay, and try to raise their own brood as well. Even more chicks fledged with luck. Headstarting alone is unlikely to save the spoony but by boosting the number of chicks being produced from this population – it aims to buy us time. Time to identify and tackle the most important problems faced by this Critically Endangered unique little bird – currently thought to be habitat loss and hunting along their flyway – where real steps forward are being made on both counts.

I’ll update on progress here in a few weeks’ time – when eggs will be hatching and the Arctic summer will be at its peak. For now, its back on with the thermals, woolly hat and gloves – we’ve got spoonies to find.

Photos (all by Guy Anderson):

Meinypil’gyno village, Chukotka

The tundra - spoony breeding grounds.

Spoony ‘M4’, back on his territory for a few short months