In addition to scientific research, the working group also tries to protect the spoonbills and little egrets themselves as much as possible, as well as their habitat. One of the causes of death in spoonbills is caused by collisions with power lines, especially the top two wires, which are the thinnest and therefore least visible.

It happens quite often that we see older spoonbills in the same place as the years before, before or during or after the breeding season. Keimpe Bleeker from Friesland saw two such old acquaintances together for the first time in northern Friesland on April 10.

In a recently published article, we show that the agenda of a female spoonbill during the breeding season looks very different from that of her partner, both in time and space. Read here about our most interesting findings and a link to the original article.

On March 19, Wouter Vansteelant made a sighting of some spoonbills being hunted by a White-tailed Eagle. Here you can read what happened.

Nowadays it is possible to see spoonbills in the Delta area in every month of the year. That was quite different in the past. In the late 1980s, the population of spoonbills in the Netherlands was still recovering from the major blow inflicted by pesticides in the aquatic environment.

Recently, the Spoonbill Working Group received a question about the possibility of equipping a spoonbill, about to be released after a period of care in a bird rescue center, with a unique color ring combination.

It has been a strange autumn as far as spoonbill migration is concerned. They stayed on Schiermonnikoog for a very long time, especially at the high-water refuges near the 1st and 4th mudflats, the Willemsduin and near the Reef.

Loud knocking on the door of the farm house on the Marais d’Orx, a lake near Bayonne in southwest France. Paul comes to warn us. It has stopped raining, the heavy clouds of that day have broken up and, unexpectedly, hundreds of spoonbills enter the airspace above the Maraix d’Orx, sometimes beautifully illuminated by the afternoon sun.

The spoonbill migration is in full swing. On September 28, Kai (NDUP) makes a stopover in the Baarzandse Kreek near Breskens and then flies to Nolon, northeast of Rochefort. On October 8, Sven searches for and finds 4 transmitter spoonbills, Bob (YfaB/BLG), Amie (NfYp/aYR), Zilver (YfGR/RLa) and BWL7, in Stellendam, Haringvliet.

Every year, spoonbills are color-ringed on Schiermonnikoog. The chicks that can almost fly are given a ring with their own color code. That means we can recognize them all individually. In the past, the chicks were given colored rings, but in recent years they have been given a white ring with letters and numbers on it.