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.

After many years of wrangling and procedures, the first water flowed into the Hedwige and Prosperpolder on October 25, 2022. To this end, a new sea-retaining dike has been constructed and the surrounding dikes have been lowered.

The 2023 ringing season is over again in the Delta area. Limited access to the area, bird flu and threat of foxes made it exciting again this year. A review.

In 2022, we equipped several spoonbills with a GPS-tracker, in collaboration with NIOZ and BirdEyes. Therefore we can obtain a better view of the areas and habitats that spoonbills use throughout the year. Read some interesting findings here!

Delta Op 25 mei 2022 gingen leden van de Werkgroep Lepelaar evenals voorgaande jaren naar het Slaakeiland in het Krammer Volkerak met de bedoeling jonge lepelaars te kleurringen. Op het eiland bevonden zich 111 nesten verdeeld over 4-5 clusters en een aantal losse nesten. In het eerste cluster waar geringd zou worden lag een groot…

While observing the first spoonbills of this season, spoonbill-ringer Harry Horn looks back to the early 1980s when spoonbills gradually discovered all the Wadden Islands and ringing was started there as well.