Last of Their Kind
Text and photos by Gerrit Vyn
Surely, it was a hallucination. A figment of my weary, sodden brain after seven days of slogging across the soggy tundra in search of one of the world’s rarest birds. It was mid-thaw in Chukotka, and the going was tough. Stomping through stubborn snowfields. Wading through melt-water ponds. Scrutinizing the broad gravel spits for signs of life. My eyes were bleary and my body exhausted. And now this stinging, sleety rain.
I was trudging back to the village, head down, thinking only of the warm meal that awaited me, when I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks. A little bird stood alone along the edge of a thawing pond, just 15 feet away, puffed up against the cold. Russet-brown and tiny, about as tall as an apple, it winced every time an icy rain pellet hit its head. I stepped back to give it some space, frantically wiping the lenses of my foggy binoculars, and brought the bird into focus. With its broad, spatulate bill, it was unmistakable.
Though I’d traveled across 18 time zones to reach this remote spot in extreme far eastern Russia, at that moment I knew it was well worth the effort. I was standing before a Spoon-billed Sandpiper, one of perhaps only 200 remaining in the world. ...
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