Finally found a
Sharp-tailed Sandpiper on the farms at IRRI. It's a passage migrant, and as such it should be annual, but despite extensive searching I've yet to find it, until today! In company with about 50
Wood Sandpipers and 4
Long-toed Stints, it didn't stand out at all size wise from the Woodies. It was only because I'd spotted the Long-toed Stints and was trying to get pictures that I was scanning through the flock more carefully than usual when there it was!
This looks to me like an adult moutling out of breeding plumage (a few brown chevrons visible on the underparts, upperparts still with white-buff fringes, rufous cap)
An interesting size comparison with the strikingly similarly plumaged juvenile
Long-toed Stint
Another beauty and another bird I dreamt of finding in Zambia. A tad optimistic perhaps...
ReplyDeleteA cracker isn't it? They are quite scarce here, or at least scarcely reported which isn't the same thing. The field guide has an early date of 17 Sept, so this is an extremely early bird. I love the fact that it was in company with an LTStint. Tim Fisher once described LTStints as "like miniature Sharp-tailed Sands" I can see what he meant!
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