• About saxophones and spoonbill trachea

    Over saxofoons en de luchtpijp van lepelaars

    In 1840, the ambitious and then 26-year-old Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax developed a wind instrument that should incorporate all the good qualities of classical musical instruments. That first “saxophone” was a very large one, a bass saxophone with a very deep sound.

  • Report of a day of spoonbill ringing in the delta

    Verslag van een dagje lepelaars ringen in de delta

    June 7 was one of the days that we went ringing the delta spoonbills this year. At two different locations even. Left Middelburg early, first picked up two people in Goes and then someone at the carpool place near Yerseke.

  • Measures against wire victims

    Maatregelen tegen draadslachtoffers

    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.

  • Two somewhat older spoonbills seen together by Keimpe Bleeker

    Twee wat oudere lepelaars samen gezien door Keimpe Bleeker

    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.

  • Spoonbill pairs have a strict division of parental tasks

    Lepelaarparen houden er een strikte taakverdeling op na

    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.

  • Spoonbills hunted by White-tailed Eagle

    Lepelaars bejaagd door zeearend

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

  • Spoonbills all year round in the Dutch Delta area

    Lepelaars jaarrond in het Deltagebied

    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.

  • About power-lines and bird-rescue

    Hoogspanningsleidingen en de vogelopvang

    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.

  • How are the Schiermonnikoog spoonbills doing?

    Hoe vergaat het de lepelaars van Schiermonnikoog op dit moment?

    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.

  • Excited about migration

    Trek in trek

    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.

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