Yu Yat Tung (from right), Fu Wing Kan and a colleague from the Hong Kong Bird Watching Society on a relentless search for the spoon-billed sandpiper. Provided to China Daily

The Fujian survey, together with the Guangxi survey, is part of a project to investigate the winter distribution of spoon-billed sandpipers in South China. Managed by HKBWS and supported by Ocean Park Conservation Foundation, Hong Kong, the survey area also includes Hainan and Guangdong provinces.

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In Hainan, conservationists from Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden, another conservation NGO active in Hong Kong and South China, also failed to spot the bird, despite their best efforts.

However, the sightings in Guangdong and Guangxi were "beyond our expectations", comments Fu Wing Kan, HKBWS' China Programme officer.

In December, Richard Lewthwaite and Jonathan Martinez of HKBWS saw four spoon-billed sandpipers at Fucheng, near Leizhou in Guangdong province, in drained fishponds.

The site is near Zhanjiang, where the French ornithologist Pierre Jabouille described the sandpiper as fairly numerous during a 1930s winter.

"The sighting in Guangxi is certainly good news for us," Yu says. "Together with the discovery in Guangdong, it proves the bird is a more widespread wintering species on coasts of southern China than was previously known."

"As the future of the spoon-billed sandpiper looks gloomy and tidal-flat areas in East China have shrunk, we felt it was urgent to learn about the situation of this bird's wintering in China and detect threats."

While evidence of large-scale trapping of shorebirds was found in Guangdong, which certainly threatens the sandpiper's wintering sites, Yu, Fu and their colleagues found other threats in Guangxi.

Habitat loss is a major problem, Yu says.

At Qinzhou Bay, a massive sea-fill project is underway to build Qinzhou Harbor.

"The project is mammoth. After it is completed, a large part of the coast will become land," Fu says.

Along the coast, they saw hordes of people make a living on the mudflats, harvesting shells and cultivating oysters. Yu counted more than 100 people working on the beach at Yingpan, Beihai. "It's so crowded, there really is little space left for the wintering waders, including the spoon-billed sandpiper," he says.

Additionally, since many coastal reserves in the region are preserving mangrove forests, this leaves little space for mudflats and fishponds (roosting sites for waders at high tide).

"To protect the wintering sites of the spoon-billed sandpiper, we must put some key mudflats and fishponds under protection," Fu says.

She says that HKBWS has been monitoring spoon-billed sandpipers in Hong Kong since the 1980s, as they make stopovers during their spring migration. But only a few sightings have been recorded in autumn and winter.

"In recent years, observations in Hong Kong have become fewer and fewer," she says. "So we have begun paying attention to the bird's situation in the whole country since 2005."

Contact the writer at chenliang@chinadaily.com.cn.