Jon,
A long time ago, 1983 to be exact, I was birding Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in New York with my two sons, John and Michael, when we ran into Tom Davis. We saw some of these Semipalmated Sandpipers with long bills and he explained that there is a population of them that breeds east of Hudson Bay. Tom, long since dead of a stroke, was one of the top field ornithologists in the New York area. Pyle (Identification Guide to North American Birds, Part II) states "Monotypic. Populations breeding in AK average smaller (especially in exposed culmen length) than those breeding in e. Canada but variation slight and apparently clinal." So Tom was right and you probably saw one of the easternmost birds of the cline. The first impression one gets when seeing one of these birds is "Western Sandpiper", because of the bill length, then something just doesn't look right and you look more closely at plumage. Now you won't forget about this bird just as I never forgot my encounter along with Tom Davis. Incidentally, while we were there a flock of Sanderlings in bright breeding plumage arrived. In their midst John found an equally bright Stint which we at first thought was Red-necked, but which turned out to be a Little Stint. Can you believe, we were initially disappointed because we had seen the Little Stint found by Paul DuMont at Port Mahon Road the year before but had never seen a Red-necked Stint. Then reality set in and we celebrated the Little Stint observation, as we should have from the outset. This was a few years before Michael wrote The Shorebird Guide, quite a few.
Paul O'Brien
Rockville, Mont. Co., MD
-----Original Message-----
From: Jon Corcoran <>
To: MDOSPREY <>
Sent: Thu, Jul 21, 2011 5:40 pm
Subject: [MDOSPREY] Long-billed SESA
Hello,
Nothing extravagant to post here but I stopped by Paper Mill Flats in Baltimore
this afternoon and scoped the shorebirds, which seemed to be mostly Least
Sandpiper by density, followed pretty closely by Semipalmated Sandpipers. There
were also 4 Lesser and 1 Greater Yellowlegs, a Spotted Sandpiper and 4 Killdeer.
What was interesting was a SESA with an obviously long bill. The bill was long
enough that the bird stood out as it moved about the flats. I uploaded a photo
if anyone is interested:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thrasher72/5962321239/in/photostream
Take care,
Jon Corcoran
Catonsville, MD
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