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Tweet of the Day

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Discover birds through their songs and calls. 265 programmes of 90 seconds, over a year

Discover birds through their songs and calls. Each Tweet of the Day begins with a call or song, followed by a story of fascinating ornithology inspired by the sound.

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Tweet of the Day: Spoon-billed Sandpiper

06/01/2015

Spoon-billed Sandpiper

BBC Radio 4 - Tweet of the Day, Spoon-billed Sandpiper

Liz Bonnin presents the diminutive spoon-billed sandpiper of the high Russian tundra.

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world. 

Liz Bonnin presents the diminutive spoon-billed sandpiper of the high Russian tundra. Spoon-billed sandpipers are wading birds, no bigger than a house sparrow. They have rust-coloured feathers and a black, spoon-shaped bill for sifting tiny creatures from the mud or catching insects on the tundra of eastern Russia, where they breed. In winter they fly down to south-east Asian estuaries. Here they are increasingly threatened by the reclamation of mudflats for development and by local people who trap the waders in fine nests to eat. Today, there may be fewer than a thousand birds left. Now conservationists have taken some birds into captivity to establish a breeding stock, but others are being helped on their breeding grounds by headstarting, whereby adults are encouraged to lay a second clutch of eggs after the first are removed. Its hope that this work, plus encouraging local hunters in Asia to release any sandpipers caught in nets, will secure the spoon-billed sandpiper for future generations.

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