A bit of excitement this week when Andy Wilkes found a stint sp. from the benches at Church Norton. Thanks to his Nikon P1000 (an impressive camera for distant birds) the photos of the distant bird were shared and discussed on social media with Matt Eades suggesting it was a Semipalmated Sandpiper and further photos confirmed that. This is only the 2nd record for the Selsey Peninsula and the first for Pagham Harbour, following a bird at Chichester Gravel Pits as long ago as 1998.
It took me a good nearly two full days to catch up with the bird. It appeared on its first two days at mid falling tide at Church Norton so after I spent Sunday evening without luck and then the whole Monday morning looking for it in with the Dunlins on East Side, I tried again at Church Norton at mid-tide on Monday afternoon and fortunately this creature of habit appeared again on cue.
Adult Semipalmated Sandpiper (Andy Wilkes). The short primary projection, lack of rufous tones (particularly in the tertials), the heavily streaked breast and some markings on the flanks with broken tramlines on the mantle and yellow/gold fringes on the dark centred scapulars are all indicative of adult Semipalmated Sandpiper.
Juvenile Dunlin and adult Semipalmated Sandpiper (Andy Wilkes). The American visitor seemed to have made a friend and stuck closely with this juvenile Dunlin. Interestingly they didn't appear to be roosting with the main Dunlin flock as several people checked the roost so they must have had their own roosting routine.
Adult Semipalmated Sandpiper (Photos by Andy Wilkes above and below) . The broken tramlines are shown well in the above image and the semipalmations are shown in both images.
I counted 232 Dunlin in the roost. Four Curlew Sandpipers were in with them. Pretty good numbers of waders around at the moment. Here's my counts from Monday
HERETurnstones
Whimbrel
and as a comparison shot of what my Canon R7 can only managed with a distant wader. Here's the best photo I could get of the Semi-p.
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