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| Very dodgy record shot of the Lesser Sandpiper - heavy processed due to mist! |
A Least Sandpiper has been present more or less continuously at Steart Marshes since the 2nd of January. It was not a drop all and twitch moment as I’ve seen one quite well before with Jeremy back in 2017 at Lodmoor RSPB in Weymouth. The attractive and showy Yellow-browed Warbler and the life tick of the Northumberland White-billed Diver (links) have been the traveling focus of my intentions so far in January. Fast forward to this Thursday with a day out somewhere planned and the added attraction of Steart Marshes being a new reserve for me, I left home at the comfortable time of 07:15 and headed down the M5 towards Somerset.
It was very foggy at home, which was a little disconcerting, but this came and went along the M5 with intervals of pale winter sun. It was still pretty misty and cold when I arrived at Steart but as I parked a male Stonechat sat up right in front of me and peered intently through my windscreen. It’s so very easy to forget how alluring and beautiful some of our common birds are!
After a brisk ten minute walk I settled down in the Quantock hide, set up my scope with 3 other birders and started to scan the muddy waters edge for something that looked like the Least Sandpiper. There were lots of Dunlin feeding on the rough island vegetation and shoreline but, seen well, the Least Sandpiper is very obviously much smaller than their common cousin. If I had a tip for the fledgling birder (sorry about the pun) it would be to study Dunlin and make sure you can do them in all plumages. Its probably the most widespread and common of our over wintering white and brown waders and hence is the first bird of this type you need to consider upon birding wetlands this time of year.
Much more difficulty lies in the possible confusion with overwintering Little Stint, of which at least two were present in the same location. Perhaps the easiest diagnostic feature is the leg colour which is black in Little Stint and Green in the Least Sandpiper. The issue with relying on this is that the Little Stint feeds on muddy margins and so its legs quite often look paler due to a covering of mud. The Stint is brownish grey on top whereas the Sandpiper is more a dark streaked brown. Seen side by side the Least Sandpiper also appears slightly smaller.
With just 42 records to the end of 2022 the Least Sandpiper counts as a two star rarity in the Collins bird bible. They breed in northern north America on the tundra and bogs and migrate to the southern united states, central and southern America for the winter. In common with many Sandpipers, the female leaves before or just after the eggs hatch leaving all remaining parental duties to the male.
The dense fog had lifted but it was still misty as we scanned the banks. We eventually found a small wader but it took a little while to tie it down to species level, Little Stint, in the mist. Some time passed as the mist came and went and it was not looking very hopeful when a promising bird flew onto a somewhat distant shoreline but eventually between us we managed to tie it down, Lesser Sandpiper! It acted in a rather manic way as it hyperactively fed on invertebrates in the mud, never still for a second. It was interesting to compare its feeding habit to the nearby Little Stint, being much more akin to a Sanderling which always reminds me of a child’s windup clockwork toy.
I took a few record shot pictures, and record shots they really were. Watching in the scope was a bit like Enna Sharples “twitching” her neighbours through her net curtains. If you are too young to know who that is – ask your mum!
Around about lunch time a Booted Eagle, which had been seen on and off for a few days right at the end of Cornwall, put in a reappearance after going AWOL the previous day. Now I was faced with a dilemma, stick with my initial plan, and go to Greylake for the afternoon to try and see a confiding female Merlin or take a chance on the Booted Eagle coming back into roost in its seemly favourite pines in Cornwall. Never one for doing the sensible thing, I rather idiotically went for the latter and spent the last two hours of the day dipping it. Oh well, you’ve got to be in it to win it!
Just to add salt into the wounds it showed well the next day having apparently roosted in the pines, it must have either snuck in low down from behind or came in when it was too dark to see. I think if I want to see it I will need to do an overnighter but we have got some pressing family issues we need to deal with at the moment so that’s not a priority.
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