This story is part of The Better India’s new wildlife series, Species in Focus: 52 species. 52 stories. 52 reasons to protect India’s wildlife. One species at a time, the series explores India’s rare, endangered and lesser-known wildlife, their habitats, behaviour, ecological roles and conservation status.
A lime-green ring marked ‘2K’ has helped birdwatchers in Bengal identify a visitor whose journey began thousands of kilometres away.
The bird, a spoon-billed sandpiper, was photographed at Kargil Beach in Bakkhali, South 24 Parganas, on October 24, 2026. The following day, it was spotted again at nearby Patibunia Beach.
According to The Times of India, the bird was tagged in Russia’s Chukotka region on July 6, 2025. Its appearance on the Bengal coast, around 8,000 km from its tagging location, offers a glimpse into the movements of one of the world’s most threatened migratory shorebirds.
For birdwatchers, identifying the same individual across different locations is an important record.
The spoon-billed sandpiper’s survival is tied to a chain of coastal habitats stretching from the Russian Far East to South and Southeast Asia. Bengal is one part of this journey, and protecting its mudflats matters far beyond the state’s coastline.
A tag that connects two coastlines
The bird’s movements along the Bengal coast have been documented over several months.
On March 29, 2026, birdwatcher Sandip Das, a founding member of the Bengal-based Birdwatchers’ Society, photographed a spoon-billed sandpiper at Patibunia Beach. Birdwatchers Soumya Aon and Kaustav Khan were also present. Two days later, another individual was photographed by Jayanta Manna. This second bird carried a lime-green tag on its right leg.
The tagged bird continued to be sighted at Patibunia until June 1. When it reappeared at Kargil Beach in October, the tag marked ‘2K’ helped birdwatchers establish that it was the same individual.
According to Das, the bird may have travelled to feeding grounds in Bangladesh before returning to Bengal. He also told The Times of India that a return to its Russian breeding site was unlikely, as the territory was already occupied by breeding pairs, potentially leading to conflict.
With these sightings, three individual spoon-billed sandpipers have now been photographically recorded in Bengal: one in 2018 and two in 2026.
But what makes this record important is not simply that a rare bird has visited the state. It offers evidence of how individual birds move between habitats, helping researchers understand which coastal stretches they depend on.
Why a spoon-shaped bill matters
Unlike most sandpipers, which have relatively straight, narrow bills, this species has a distinctive spatula-shaped tip that helps it pick small food items from wet mud.
These birds feed on small invertebrates and other organisms found in intertidal mudflats. Such habitats provide food and resting places during migration, helping them build the energy needed to continue their journey.
The species is classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. Its global wild population is estimated at fewer than 500 individuals.
The challenge is that its feeding grounds are not interchangeable. A bird that loses access to one important stopover may not find another suitable habitat in time.
When a wetland disappears, the journey is interrupted
The spoon-billed sandpiper’s migration takes it across the East Asian–Australasian Flyway, a network of routes connecting breeding grounds in the north with wintering areas further south.
One of its most important ecological bottlenecks is the Yellow Sea, between China and the Korean Peninsula. Its tidal flats provide feeding and resting grounds for migratory shorebirds.
🏁It’s time for the birds’ annual migration marathon 🕊️ 🐧 🦅 Watch this video to follow a remarkable spoon-billed sandpiper’s incredible journey over thousands of kilometres. Will he be able to cross the finish line? #SaveSpoonie #wetlands #WMBD2023 #wwfindia #wwf https://t.co/eyY4devKST
— WWF-India (@WWFINDIA) May 13, 2023
However, coastal reclamation, infrastructure development, hunting and disturbance have reduced or degraded several of these habitats.
In June 2026, Sixth Tone, a Chinese news daily, reported how public pressure helped halt a proposed highway in China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The 47-km project, estimated to cost 5.1 billion yuan (approximately $710 million), threatened mudflats used by nearly 20,000 waterbirds belonging to 46 species.
An environmental assessment identified more than 24 hectares of important spoon-billed sandpiper habitat, including mangrove wetlands. Following citizen campaigns and complaints to authorities, China’s central environmental authorities suspended the project on May 25, finding that its environmental assessment lacked a sufficient scientific basis. Alternative routes were subsequently proposed for evaluation.
Can conservation give the species a head start?
One conservation intervention being used in Russia is called headstarting. Under this method, eggs are collected from the wild, incubated and hatched under human care. The chicks are raised until they are old enough to be released into their natural habitat.
According to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), 236 headstarted spoon-billed sandpipers have been released so far, with 19 subsequently returning to breed in Russia.
Illustrated by @mitul987 and Asif Kureshi. The Spoon-billed Sandpiper is listed as critically #endangered by @IUCNRedList. Fewer than 200 estimated in the #wild, It’s never been recorded breeding over 5 km from the shore. Destruction of #wetlands is a huge threat to this #bird. https://t.co/WnYMtpAU4r
— Sanctuary Asia (@SanctuaryAsia) December 10, 2019
The technique addresses one of the species’ biggest challenges: the low survival rate of chicks in the wild. WWT estimates that only around three out of every 20 eggs laid naturally produce chicks that survive to adulthood, compared with 15 out of every 20 among headstarted chicks.
However, breeding interventions cannot replace the need to protect the wetlands these birds depend on.
What Bengal’s sightings mean
Back in Bakkhali, conservation efforts are also taking place at the local level.
Birdwatchers have been conducting monthly surveys at Patibunia and Kargil beaches to monitor waders and other shorebirds. The South 24 Parganas Forest Department has installed signboards asking visitors and local residents not to disturb birdlife and has increased patrolling.
The appearance of bird ‘2K’ does not, by itself, indicate that the spoon-billed sandpiper population is recovering. But it provides another record of the connections between Bengal’s coastline and distant breeding and feeding grounds.
The bird may be only a few centimetres long, but its journey links conservation decisions across continents. Whether it can make that journey again will depend, in part, on whether places like Bakkhali remain safe enough for it to stop, feed and move on.
Sources:
‘Critically endangered Spoon-billed Sandpiper, tagged in Russia, sighted again on Bengal beach’: By TOI, Published on 26 October 2026
‘Critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper clicked on beach near Bakkhali, 2nd photo record from Bengal’: Krishnendu Mukherjee, Published on 30 March 2026
‘How a Rare Bird Stopped a Highway Project in South China’: By Jiang Xinyi and Yang Yang, Published on 2 June 2026
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: thebetterindia.com
