Spoon-billed sandpipers!

I have just had the chance to scan a few images from my trip to Rudong. The whole area was fantastic despite all the land reclamation and construction. We managed to see several spoon-bills but it was a lot tougher than I thought. Picking the birds out of a roosting flock of red-necked stints was nearly impossible, and nearly every time we did pick one up the whole flock would fly for seemingly no reason. On one of our last evenings we finally found a bird close to the road and were able to watch for a long period in relative comfort and great light. As the tide dropped we were able to follow it out onto the mud and continued to get great views.

Most of the time watching the birds were spent photographing the them as the encounters were quite brief. The drawing above was done from a short video the evening after.

I generally scanned the roosting flocks as they arrived, but after a  few pans of the scope I would settle down for some sketching. On one of these occasions, I started sketching some roosting terek sandpipers and a spoon-billed sand wandered infront of them! But as usual, the whole flock flew off shortly after.

Terek Sandpipers and spoon billed sand.