Spoon-billed Sandpiper
Calidris pygmaea
Critically endangered, highly distinctive stint with spatulate bill tip that can be difficult to spot at a distance when held in profile. A coastal mudflat specialist, it stays close to wet and muddy areas near or in water, unlike Red-necked Stint, which often feeds in much drier areas. Breeding adults have a rusty head that resembles that of Red-necked, but the head tends to be darker and the rusty color extends farther down the breast. Nonbreeding adults and juveniles lack the rusty head, have prominent fine stripes on the crown, dark ear patch, and are overall paler than Red-necked. Flight call a soft “prreee.”
Identification
The most distinctive feature of this species is its spatulate bill. The breeding adult bird has a red-brown head, neck and breast with dark brown streaks, blackish upperparts with buff and pale rufous fringing. Non-breeding adults lack the reddish colouration, but have pale brownish-grey upperparts with whitish fringing to the wing-coverts. The underparts are white and the legs are black. It is 14–16 cm (5.5–6.3 in) long.<p>The measurements are; wing 98–106 mm, bill 19–24 mm, bill tip breadth 10–12 mm, tarsus 19–22 mm and tail 37–39 mm.<p>The contact calls of the spoon-billed sandpiper include a quiet preep or a shrill wheer. The song, given during display, is an intermittent buzzing and descending trill preer-prr-prr. The display flight of the male includes brief hovers, circling and rapid diving while singing.
Taxonomy
Platalea pygmea was the scientific name proposed by Carl Linnaeus in 1758. It was moved to Eurynorhynchus by Sven Nilsson in 1821. It is now classified under the calidrid sandpipers.
- Scientific name
- Calidris pygmaea
- Authority
- (Linnaeus, 1758)
- Order
- Charadriiformes
- Family
- Scolopacidae
- Genus
- Calidris
Range and habitat
The spoon-billed sandpiper's breeding habitat is sea coasts and adjacent hinterland on the Chukchi Peninsula and southwards along the isthmus of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It migrates down the Pacific coast through Japan, Korea and China, to its main wintering grounds in south and southeast Asia, where it has been recorded from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore.<p>Through phylogenetic analyses for the complete mitogenome sequence, South Korean and Chinese C. pygmaea groups were indicated to be closely related to Arenaria interpres because of the similarity in the series of protein-coding genes.<p>In March 2024, a spoon-billed sandpiper was sighted in the Philippines at Balanga, Bataan mudflat.
- Breeding range
- PAL : coastal low Arctic to subarctic tundra of ne Siberia: ne, e Chukotskiy Pen. to n Kamchatka Pen. (ne Russia)
- Non-breeding range
- OR : coastal mudflats from Taiwan and ec China to Bangladesh; mainly Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh
- Migration
- Complete migrants
Behavior
Migration pattern: Complete migrants.
Conservation
Population trend: declining.
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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