Hi all
I dropped in at Penryhn Road, Port Botany (Sydney) today at about 8:45am
after dropping some friends at the airport. There wasn't much about - 8 Red
Capped Dotterel, 2 Double Banded Dotterel, 20 Bar Tailed Godwits, 15 Pied
Stilts, plenty of cormorants and Silver Gulls.
However, there was one small wader that caught my eye. It was on the
airport (far?) side of the sandbank that sticks out into Botany Bay,
foraging busily right on the shoreline (the tide was out, so it was on muddy
sand). While it looked like a Red Necked Stint (RNS), a couple of features
did not work for me...
1/ the bird was very small - when it stood in front of a Red Capped Dotterel
(RCD) it was noticeable smaller. (If an RCD is 14-16cm per Pizzey, I'd make
this bird 12-14cm, which is at the small end of the scale for RNS) The RCD
was about 50cm behind and still looked larger, so I'd put the size
difference at about 2 or 3cm.
2/ the (black) bill was quite fine and noticeably down curved with no
obvious bulb at the end
Otherwise, bill and legs black; very white belly and throat; the belly went
quite high up the sides; white throat surrounded by grey speckled
epaulettes; overall grey/brown scalloped plumage on the back; darkish eye
stripe with white eyebrow and grey crown with darker stripes
I did not see the bird fly, so have no idea of wing/rump pattern.
My initial call is that it's probably a small RNS, but the size and bill had
me wondering if it was a Little Stint. (Have they ever been recorded in
Sydney before even?) It may be worth checking out? (If it's still there of
course.)
Cheers
Tom Wilson
PS - sorry about the lateness of a post like this post-sighting for
something possibly unusual- this is the 1st chance I've had at e-mail since
I got home.
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