On the Wing #12: Saving the Spoon-billed Sandpiper

The bird world is filled with species that beguile and amaze us with their plumages, displays, flight styles, and call notes. They range from the unusual Wrybill (Anarhynchus frontalis) with its right hand facing bill to the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock (Rupicola peruvianus) with their vibrant orange plumage and crest to the majesty of the Whooping Crane (Grus americana) that continues to recover despite the daunting odds that it faces in its future survival. Those daunting odds are more apparent these days as many species of birds are endangered with a few that are even critical.

The little guy in front of the Curlew Sandpiper(Calidris ferruginea) is the one who needs our help!

One of those species is the Spoon-billed Sandpiper (Eurynorhynchus pygmeus), a critically endangered shorebird that breeds in the Siberian Arctic and is feared to number at less than 100 breeding pairs! I recently became enamored and concerned about the plight of the SBSA (alpha code being used for convenience). After watching a video posted by the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust's conservation arm which focused on the efforts by their organization, as well as other supporting organizations such as Birds Russia, Moscow Zoo, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, to save the SPSA from extinction. Being a bird lover and reader of all things bird and birding related, I recently finished Christopher Cokinos book entitled "Hope is the Thing With Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds" which discussed six birds to go extinct within North America within the last 200 years. Included was the plight of the Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephalis pricipalis), Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchos labradorius), Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), and Heath Hen (Tympanuchus cupido cupido) (which was actually a subspecies of the Greater Prairie-Chicken that lived in the scrub plains of the east) where in which all suffered from the same man-made fate whether it was hunting, habitat destruction, or ignorance to their needs and ways. With these emblems of extinction and loss, the idea of losing another unique species to the jaws of man-made extinction is unforgivable and needs to be reversed!

Rough-carved feeder and resting adult SPSA decoy waiting to be sanded.

Carving out the sleeper and chick SPSA. Should be done in the next day or so.

With that sentiment in my heart and belief in my mind I've set out to do something about this. Using my growing skills as a wood carver, I plan to make a rig of four SPSA decoys and sell them to raise money to save these little guys from extinction. They desperately need the money, time, and research in order to be saved from certain doom and it's really horrifying to hear that they could be gone in as little as a decade! The most recent extinction I think we've had to date was the Dusky Seaside Sparrow (Ammodramus maritimus nigrescens) which was wiped out by seashore developers in the late 1980s. To have another be lost would just be tragic and we can't let that happen. Included above are two pictures of my progress so far. They may not look like much at the moment, but trust me, they'll get a whole lot more realistic as time goes on. I should be able to finish carving and sanding by Friday and start painting by next week. I just want to make a difference so badly and I think that by making these and selling them, I can do so just that. All I have to do is try and that's the best anyone can do. Happy birding!