Abstract

BackgroundThe Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia) occurs throughout Eurasia and North and sub-Saharan Africa, with three recognized subspecies and six geographically distributed populations. However, in China, we knew almost nothing about migration routes, habitat use and effectiveness of current site protection measures for this species.MethodsWe deployed Global Positioning System/Global System for Mobile Communications (GPS/GSM) satellite trackers on 29 Eurasian Spoonbills captured in summer in Mongolia and northeastern China, to obtain complete migration routes data from 10 individuals from 19 complete migration episodes.ResultsTracking data showed no geographical overlap during the annual cycle in Eurasian Spoonbills marked in the two main summering areas. Birds marked in the Naoli River Basin in Heilongjiang Province, China, wintered along the Jiangsu coastline in China, while Eurasian Spoonbills from two discrete summering areas (in Inner and western Mongolia) overwintered inland in the Yangtze River floodplain of China. Excluding the single Inner Mongolian bird, spring migration was significantly faster than autumn migration in the other two groups of birds. Eurasian Spoonbills mainly used water, wetland and grassland habitats in summer, but almost exclusively water in winter. Lack of protection of staging sites used by all the birds in spring and poor levels of protection throughout the annual cycle for western Mongolian birds (5–22%) gives considerable cause for concern, although sites used in other time by East Mongolian and Naoli River birds in the rest of their annual life cycle enjoyed good levels of protection (49–95%).ConclusionsThese results revealed previously unknown relationships between summering and wintering areas, migration routes and stopover sites for Eurasian Spoonbills wintering in China, suggesting the existence of discrete biogeographical population units. They also identified winter habitat use of Eurasian Spoonbills in China, confirming open water habitats as being critical throughout the annual cycle, although based on small sample size, gaps in current site safeguard networks for these populations.

Highlights

  • The Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia) occurs throughout Eurasia and North and sub-Saharan Africa, with three recognized subspecies and six geographically distributed populations

  • The remainder are considered to belong to the nominate subspecies (3) the Eurasian Spoonbill (P. l. leucorodia) which is widely distributed throughout Eurasia

  • We report the first deployment of satellite tracking technology to study the migration of the Eurasian Spoonbill in East Asia, to establish the migration routes and strategy of the species, its habitat use and the degree of site safeguard currently in place to protect areas used along its regular migration corridors

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Summary

Introduction

The Eurasian Spoonbill (Platalea leucorodia) occurs throughout Eurasia and North and sub-Saharan Africa, with three recognized subspecies and six geographically distributed populations. Eurasian Spoonbills breed across Eurasia and winter in North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and Eurasia, comprising three identified subspecies. These are: (1) a West African subspecies (Platalea leucorodia balsaci), Xi et al Avian Research (2021) 12:70 which breeds mainly in Mauritanian and coastal islands (Piersma et al 2012); (2) a Red Sea subspecies We still know lamentably little about its flyway structure and the potential for small discrete elements of the species to be threatened because of its narrow feeding niche and reliance upon threatened and degrading wetlands

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