Endangered black-faced spoonbills were recently spotted in Shenzhen Bay, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported Sunday.
According to the Shenzhen Mangrove Wetlands Conservation Foundation (MCF), among the hundreds of thousands of migratory birds that have flown to Shenzhen Bay to spend this winter, more than 300 of them are black-faced spoonbills.
According to the 2018 global black-faced spoonbill census coordinated by the Hong Kong Birdwatching Association earlier this year, the exact number of the black-faced spoonbill population obtained by a synchronous counting of global resources is 3,941.
Coincidentally, the number in 2017 was also 3,941. This shows that the protection of black-faced spoonbills has been effective since the number hasn’t decreased. However, the protection also requires more efforts as the number has also not increased, a staffer with the MCF added.
There are 744 black-faced spoonbills on the Chinese mainland, which makes it the second largest black-faced spoonbill habitat in the world. A total of 350 black-faced spoonbills were recorded by bird-watching organizations in Shenzhen and Hong Kong during the census. The number accounted for 8.8 percent of the world’s total.
Shenzhen Bay is a gathering place where black-faced spoonbills rest and hunt every winter. In particular, a black-faced spoonbill with ring number RU24 has been spotted in Shenzhen Bay for four consecutive years.