Wanting to ride our wave of recent luck a little longer, Tilden and I returned to Myers Park in Lansing on Friday afternoon at about 4:30 PM. We don't think we saw anything particularly rare, but the birding was fun and challenging.
Immediately upon arrival, Tilden exclaimed with surprise and had his optics up in a split-second. Then he paused, relaxed, and pointed out a CASPIAN TERN, a species we haven't seen at rest so far this year. I shared a little of his shock to see that big red bill after scanning gull after gull these past couple days on that beach! Again we saw two SEMIPALMATED PLOVERS, and by this time the DUNLIN contingent had swelled to at least four birds. I could swear that I also saw a yellowlegs fly to the tip of the spit (big, slim gray shorebird with a white tail) but I couldn't find it there a few seconds later. Even more puzzling were 15 little shorebirds that I think were SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPERS. They all had black legs. Their bills all were completely straight but also quite sharply pointed. Upperparts were much more brown than gray (though not brightly rufous), with a lot of dark-centered feathers. All had very fine streaks on the breast. My instincts were nagging me the whole time that they were Least Sandpipers that somehow all showed dark legs (I wondered whether the extreme cold had anything to do with it). In the end, though, I concluded that analytic ID should trump impressions in this case, largely because I haven't closely studied Semipalmated Sandpipers in breeding plumage, nor gotten a very good sense of variation in bill shape with this species. The field marks do seem to add up, on the whole. (I feel certain that these birds weren't larger Calidris species, nor rare stints. They did not have white rumps.) Mark Chao -- Cayugabirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/CayugabirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/cayugabirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/Cayugabirds 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/CAYU.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
