Known among birdwatchers as the 'holy grail', the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper is suffering further habitat loss. Chen Liang reports in Fangchen, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Two weeks before the Lunar Spring Festival, Yu Yat Tung and two of his colleagues arrived in Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, on a mission to find a rare bird. They hired a van and traveled to Hepu, a coastal town in Qinzhou city. From there, for five days, they scanned 12 sites, including intertidal mudflats, tidal ponds, sandbars, saltpans and fishponds, all along the region's coastal line in Qinzhou, Beihai and Fangcheng cities, looking for the bird. Finally, at a drained fishpond, through powerful telescopes, they spied the bird they were after - a spoon-billed sandpiper - among dozens of wintering waders. But all too soon, a curious passerby scared the birds away.

"That was the only sighting of the bird on our whole trip," says Yu, research manager of the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, an NGO dedicated to the conservation of birds and their habitats in Hong Kong. "To be honest, it was an exciting discovery and kind of a relief for us. Before the survey, we had no confidence that we would find any in Guangxi."

The spoon-billed sandpiper is a little bigger than a sparrow, though with a much longer bill and legs, but it is listed as critically endangered by IUCN ( International Union for Conservation of Nature).

The migratory wader known for its flattened bill that flares into a "spoon" at the tip, is on the brink of extinction in the wild, and breeds on the tundra of Northeast Russia and winters on the coasts of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

According to data from the Birdlife International, the world's largest collection of conservation organizations striving to protect birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, bird numbers have shrunk further in recent years. Breeding ground surveys suggest a decline from 2,000 to 2,800 pairs in the 1970s, to fewer than 1,000 pairs in 2000.

The breeding population in 2009-2010 was optimistically estimated at 120-200 pairs, of an estimated total population of 500-800 individuals. By 2011, the first figure had been revised downwards to fewer than 100 breeding pairs. No birds were sighted wintering in Vietnam in 2009 at a site that supported at least 27 birds in the mid 1990s.

According to BBC Wildlife magazine, "the 'SBS' became one of the world's most sought-after species - a kind of holy grail".

In China, the bird used to winter in Fujian, but in 2012 just four birds were seen in the province up until early December, Yu says. HKBWS members and local bird watching societies launched a joint survey in January, but failed to find any.

The Fujian survey, together with the Guangxi survey, is part of a project to investigate the winter distribution of spoon-billed sandpipers in South China. Managed by HKBWS and supported by Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong, the survey area also includes Hainan and Guangdong provinces.

In Hainan, conservationists from Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, another conservation NGO active in Hong Kong and South China, also failed to spot the bird, despite their best efforts.

However, the sightings in Guangdong and Guangxi were "beyond our expectations", comments Fu Wing Kan, HKBWS' China Programme officer.

In December, Richard Lewthwaite and Jonathan Martinez of HKBWS saw four spoon-billed sandpipers at Fucheng, near Leizhou in Guangdong province, in drained fishponds.

The site is near Zhanjiang, where the French ornithologist Pierre Jabouille described the sandpiper as fairly numerous during a 1930s winter.

"The sighting in Guangxi is certainly good news for us," Yu says. "Together with the discovery in Guangdong, it proves the bird is a more widespread wintering species on coasts of southern China than was previously known."

"As the future of the spoon-billed sandpiper looks gloomy and tidal-flat areas in East China have shrunk, we felt it was urgent to learn about the situation of this bird's wintering in China and detect threats."

While evidence of large-scale trapping of shorebirds was found in Guangdong, which certainly threatens the sandpiper's wintering sites, Yu, Fu and their colleagues found other threats in Guangxi.

Habitat loss is a major problem, Yu says.

At Qinzhou Bay, a massive sea-fill project is underway to build Qinzhou Harbor.

"The project is mammoth. After it is completed, a large part of the coast will become land," Fu says.

Along the coast, they saw hordes of people make a living on the mudflats, harvesting shells and cultivating oysters. Yu counted more than 100 people working on the beach at Yingpan, Beihai. "It's so crowded, there really is little space left for the wintering waders, including the spoon-billed sandpiper," he says.

Additionally, since many coastal reserves in the region are preserving mangrove forests, this leaves little space for mudflats and fishponds (roosting sites for waders at high tide).

"To protect the wintering sites of the spoon-billed sandpiper, we must put some key mudflats and fishponds under protection," Fu says.

She says that HKBWS has been monitoring spoon-billed sandpipers in Hong Kong since the 1980s, as they make stopovers during their spring migration. But only a few sightings have been recorded in autumn and winter.

"In recent years, observations in Hong Kong have become fewer and fewer," she says. "So we have begun paying attention to the bird's situation in the whole country since 2005."

Contact the writer at chenliang@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily 02/21/2013 page18)