Thursday 20 July 2017

Little Stints at Oare Marshes

Adult Little Stint.

I made a brief visit to Oare Marshes yesterday morning the 19th July to try and see the Wood Sandpiper & Little Stints that had been reported earlier , i parked up in the pull-in and more or less saw 2 Little Stints straight away quite near the road.


4 adult Little Stints.

Whilst watching these i also saw a Garganey a little bit further out , i then had another look at the Little Stints which had been joined by two more birds , one of the new birds did look bigger and was much darker in plumage than the 3 other Little Stints.

Little Stints.

I was joined by Murray and we had a real close look at the slightly larger bird and we more or less concluded it was just a Little Stint at the extreme end of it's size range plus the slightly darker overall appearance is just a plumage variation. 

Darker bird at the back.

Slightly larger & darker overall.

Little Stint.

The Bonaparte's Gull had flown towards the creek before i got there plus the Wood Sandpiper was seen earlier that morning but had flown west , i did see 2 Turtle Doves plus large numbers of Black Tailed Godwits , Redshank & Avocets.

There was 2 Golden Plovers in summer plumage & several Ruff & 1 Reeve plus 2 Common Terns were briefly on the East flood , the water levels had risen slightly after the overnight storm but hopefully in the coming weeks it will drop and more exposed mud will appear.