Skip to main content

End of a 38-year hoodoo ... well sort of

 


If you have read enough of my blog posts, you probably know that shorebirding is my favorite birding activity. This may stem from starting my birding in areas of the UK and Oregon where passerine vagrants were almost non-existent, but rarer shorebirds rather more frequent. Ever since I arrived in Oregon in 1988, I have been out diligently searching for a Red-necked Stint from late June to late July in Oregon, Washington and now California.

As the decades went by, I despaired of ever finding a stint, but in early June 2023, while hoping to find a late spring vagrant White-rumped Sandpiper, I instead found an adult Little Stint – the first for Santa Barbara County. Breaking my stint “duck”, to use a cricket term, renewed my hopes of finding a Red-necked.

Unfortunately, during June 2025, while I was away in Europe, Lynn Scarlett did find the county’s first White-rumped Sandpiper. This bird naturally hung around for three days and everyone got to see it. Everyone that is to say, except for me! Even worse, this was a bird I had been looking for in the county for over 20 years, checking suitable shorebird spots during their main late May to Mid-June vagrancy window.

During my trip to Alaska, I saw multiple Red-necked Stints and White-rumped Sandpipers, and operating on the dubious theory that because I had seen one recently, I would now find a vagrant one back home, I immediately started checking the Santa Ynez River Estuary (SYRE) once I was back from Utah, as well as Devereux Slough, close to my home in Goleta. Both locations attract dozens to low hundreds of Western Sandpipers, the flocks of which might hold a vagrant stint.

The first few attempts proved fruitless, and numbers and diversity of shorebirds were rather low, as it often is this early in the migration. In fact, in all my years of looking for a Red-necked Stint in early fall migration, I have never found any other rare shorebird.

On July 11, there was a noticeable jump in the number of Western Sandpipers in the Devereux area, with about 400 being present and the next day I drove north to the SYRE full of hope there would be a big push of migrant shorebirds. The fact that some monsoonal moisture was causing a little spotty rain increased my hopes further.

Once I arrived at the SYRE, reality set in as I found that there seemed no more shorebirds than on my previous visit. In fact, dowitchers had decreased to just one. I had to remind myself in 14 years and hundreds of visits to this location, the best shorebird I had ever found was a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, which is not even a CBRC rarity, although a genuine rarity in the southern part of the state, since most records are from northern California.

After checking the upper part of the estuary where most of the shorebirds were, I headed down to the mouth where an area of mudflats on the north side often holds birds. I was pleased to see a flock of perhaps 200 peeps in the distance and slogged through some salicornia saltmarsh to get to a closer viewing point. Of course, by the time I reached this spot, the birds had moved much further away, but given how restless migrant peep flocks are, I hung and waited for them to come to me, which after a while they did.

Once the flock landed close enough, I began to pan through the flock looking for a stint. I came to a bird that was fairly similar to the surrounding Western Sandpipers in plumage, but a bit larger and much longer-winged, giving the bird an elongated appearance – a White-rumped Sandpiper!  Since there was only one previous July record for the state, I was not even considering this species as a possibility.

White-rumped Sandpiper (left) with Western Sandpipers

The flock periodically moved closer and I was able to study the bird and see the various plumages details in which it differed from the Western Sandpipers, as well as reconfirm the structural differences. I managed a few of my usual crappy pictures.

White-rumped Sandpiper

I finally had something to show for almost 40 years of July shorebirding. I had erased the heart-breaking ‘grip’ of the 2025 Devereux White-rumped Sandpiper. At last, I had found a CBRC-rarity shorebird at the SYRE! That was a lot to take in. I also appreciated the irony that I had found my first stint when searching for a White-rumped Sandpiper, but had now found a White-rumped Sandpiper while looking for a stint.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Burton Birds and Butterflies: Dusky Grouse at Last

  I had planned for a four-day stay in Burton, British Columbia, where my brother Stuart lives. I spent the time there socializing and doing some casual birding and butterflying in the immediate vicinity. I had arranged to meet a local birder – Gary Davidson – to drive up some logging roads near Nakusp to look for Dusky Grouse on my last morning. I had done this on my previous two visits and was hoping it would be 'third time lucky'. Gary also suggested that we meet the previous morning at Burton Creek mouth, along the shore of Arrow Lake, a spot that can be productive for shorebirds when the lake level is low. Unfortunately, the lake level rose immediately before I arrived and there was very little shorebird habitat present. The creek mouth had good numbers of Canada Geese and Common Mergansers and small numbers of other ducks, including three Hooded Mergansers, three Pintail and six Green-winged Teal. A Solitary Sandpiper was the main shorebird highlight. Common Loons, Ospr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Guerrero, Mexico: Barra de Potosi

My original motivation for this trip was to participate in the Barra de Potosi Christmas Bird Count (CBC). After a relaxing morning at my hotel in Zihuatanejo, I lugged my bags a few hundred yards over to where I could catch a bus to the airport, from where I was able to transfer to a bus to Barra de Potosi. On arrival I dumped my gear in the room at El Nido and connected up to the wi-fi so I could communicate with Laurel Patrick, the count organizer, and Santiago Castro, a local birder who I would be birding with on Saturday morning and on the actual count, which was on the Sunday. Laurel is the founder of El Refugio de Potasi, where injured or orphaned local wildlife that cannot safely return to the wild can find a home. Heermann's Gull Once I had sorted out when and where I would be meeting Santiago, I wandered down to the mouth of the lagoon, hoping to find something on the sandbanks. Although there is a lot of disturbance from fisherman and tourist wading around in the lagoon ...
Post a Comment
Read more

SE Spain: May 20

  For many of the birds I was hoping to see, I had planned my itinerary to give myself multiple “bites at the cherry”. However, the distances involved meant that the SE and NE legs had species that could not be seen elsewhere. So the pressure was mounting as I drove from Alcazar de San Juan to Elche, near Alicante. The must-see species at Elche was Western Olivaceous Warbler, but I was also targeting Pallid Swift, which is commoner on the coast than in the interior areas I would be spending most of my time, and Black Wheatear. I have by now submitted all my non-UK and California bird records into ebird. This had revealed that a handful of my sightings from W Europe were incorrect. This included my only Western Olivaceous Warblers from Spain, which transpired to be from an area further north on the coast where they do not occur! I had also seen the species in Morocco, but given the faux pas in Spain, it wasn’t impossible that the Morocco record was incorrect too. Upon arrival at Elc...
Post a Comment
Read more