Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - A wood sandpiper on the Meadow
Things have been rather quiet on my local patch, Port Meadow in Oxford but over the last few days things had picked up somewhat with my finding greenshank on the floods at around lunch time several days in a row. I arrived back mid afternoon from a morning's meeting up in London and didn't really feel like doing any work so I suggested to my VLW (very lovely wife) that I take our son L out for a little stroll on the Meadow. I'd noticed that a pair of little ringed plover had been posted as being seen there that day so I thought I'd have a look round to see if they were still there.
When I arrived on the Meadow it was looking absolutely gorgeous in its May colours: the hawthorn was all out and the buttercups were all coming out amongst the grass. The sky was a lovely blue and only a rather stiff northerly breeze kept it from being a perfect day. I went to my usual vantage point by the gate to the entrance to Burgess Field NR and scanned the flood shoreline through my bins for anything interesting to see if it was worth getting my scope out. After a few moments I managed to find a small wader that warranted a closer look. As usual it was as far away as possible from where I was and the sun was also more or less behind it now so even with the scope out it was difficult to make out. In shape it was closest to a redshank but it seemed too small. I'd recently been getting my head round all the waders by drawing a chart of them ranked according to size. I use dunlin, redshank, godwit and curlew as my four key size markers as I am reasonably familiar with their sizes by now. I then rank a prospective wader according to where it fits in this scheme. For example a greenshank is bigger than a redshank but not as big as a godwit. In this case the bird in question was between a dunlin and a redshank but it was difficult at that range and with the sun against me to tell any more.
I was going to call it a stunted redshank and leave it at that but I had a bit of time before I had to be back home so I thought that I would stroll over to the other side of the floods to take a closer look. The ground by the river is riddled with hardened cattle prints and is therefore very bumpy. Even with the new all-terrain pushchair it was hard going getting L round to the right side of the floods. Fortunately the bird was still there - I'd noticed that it had stayed put when some people had walked quite close by so it wasn't particularly flighty. I positioned myself so the sun was more or less behind me and got down to less than 50m from it and had a good look in my scope. I was soon able to determine to my delight that it was in fact a wood sandpiper. I carefully checked all the diagnostic features: white spangles on a green/brown back, a white supercilium, greenish legs and it even helpfully flapped its wings to reveal a white rump ending square against it's back (ie not a wedge shape like a greenshank) with small dark bars on the tail end (as opposed to the heavier dark bars of a green sandpiper) and a light underwing. I tried to take a photo which would have come out quite well at that range only to discover that my camera battery had gone flat. Nevertheless a great find and one I was most pleased about, even more so for having found it myself rather than twitching someone else's find.
The wood sandpiper which I managed to photo on another occasion.
I had a quick scan around to see if there was anything else that I'd missed and managed to find three little ringed plover along the northern shoreline. They were rather well hidden amongst the churned up mud from the cattle which explained why I'd not seen them from Burgess Field. There was also a single common tern hunting over the water briefly.
Another one to add to the year list and indeed another lifer.
164: wood sandpiper (LIFER)
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About Me
I used to be a birder in my youth but rather lost interest in my teens as other things became more interesting. However recently I've rediscovered this interest and would like to share my sightings and thoughts in this blog.
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