The spoonbill nesting season was back to normal. Last spring, the salt marsh flooded twice, so the spoonbills had very late chicks. However, there were a record number of chicks then (almost an average of two per pair). This spring there were no floods during breeding, but the number of chicks was still back to “normal,” at one per pair. In 2021, everyone was talking about lots of flatfish in the Wadden Sea and maybe that caused such high breeding success then.

This spring, seven spoonbills received transmitters. With it, the spoonbills can be tracked live, so we can see where they get their food and where they migrate to in late summer. They can be followed live on the Animal Tracker app that anyone can download through the appstore , or through the website of NIOZ .

Three of the seven tagged spoonbills we already know a little bit because they already had rings on when they were tagged. Those three are Amie, Artemis and Silver.

Artemis was born on Schiermonnikoog in 2007 and winters in a small lake in the interior of Portugal. So if all goes well, we will soon see him flying there live.

Zilver was born in 2014. She has nested all the way on the eastern tip of Schiermonnikoog and forages on the mudflats south of the Bellows. She wintered on the coast of Morocco in recent years. It will be exciting to see if she goes there again this fall and what route she flies. In southern Spain near the city of Cadiz, volunteers from the Limes Platalea working group are counting all the spoonbills migrating to Africa. They do this for three months and will see Silver fly by.

Zilver is geboren in 2014. Zij heeft helemaal op de oostpunt van Schiermonnikoog gebroed en foerageert op het wad ten zuiden van de Balg. Ze overwinterde de afgelopen jaren aan de kust van Marokko. Het wordt spannend of ze daar dit najaar weer heen gaat en welke route ze vliegt. In Zuid-Spanje bij de stad Cadiz tellen vrijwilligers van de werkgroep ‘Limes Platalea’ alle lepelaars die naar Afrika trekken. Ze doen dit drie maanden lang en zullen Zilver dan ook voorbij zien vliegen.

Check out the app Animal Tracker and follow all seven spoonbills from Schiermonnikoog on their flight south! Four of them are adult spoonbills and three are this year's young. Keep in mind that for spoonbill chicks, at least 60% do not survive the first year. Apparently it is very difficult to become an adult spoonbill.