After a good hour or so, finally located the Sandpiper as it flew in from upstream. I suspect this bird is Common but would love to be proved wrong as I haven't had much experience with winter Common or Spotted Sands. The thing that does worry me is that the legs aren't as yellow as I'd like them to be for Spotted and I also heard it call just like a Common so an over-wintering Common Sand seems likely this time! From the pics it does seem to have a slightly shorter tail projection than what a normal common would have in my opinion but whether that is a 'winter' thing, I'm not sure.
Video is better for seeing over all shape of bird and character
Good effort Alex. I'm siding with Common too. It's just not dinky enough. Vid shows a fairly long tail beyond tip of primaries whereas SS would look short with wing tip tail almost equal. plus almost always orangey legged in those I've seen. Also call should be noticeable different although I've only heard them call in central america not here. Tricky to tell from a couple of shots and like u say we don't get many commons in winter which reminds me to check tal y cafn this wkend.
ReplyDeleteNice one Alex. Glad that's cleared up. I must admit I didn't lose any sleep over it last night. Cheers
ReplyDeleteThanks. A nice early year tick and learnt quite a bit about SSands too so always beniefical!
ReplyDelete