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.
