Posted by David Fix (216.100.38.43) on October 23, 2000 at 10:43:36:
By the remarkably bright and fresh upperparts pattern, this bird is a juvenile. The pattern is like that of a Least Sandpiper, but, as an earlier respondent noted, the primary projection would seem to rule out this and other small calidridines. The 28 Aug date is the teaser; we're led to suspect that, by date, this could not be a Sharp-tailed juvenile. Indeed the bird seems to lack the flaring, crisp, fully white supercilium behind the eye which ends sharply cut-off; it shows little eye-ring, and if it were a Sharp-tailed, it would be amazing for having none of the striking and appealing 'apricot buff' color across the breast. Unlike the Sharp-tails I've seen, the dark color in the center of the breast seems, if anything, to dip down instead of pale a bit upward in the middle. This bird looks fat---the left photo suggesting a round egg with feathers pasted on and a head stuck on top. Could it be that this is a young Pec whose breast and crop are so bloated that, together with posture, the dark/light demarcation in the underparts is blurred? // The fine-looking bill of this bird had me running to the shelf for AB 41:5 to look at photos of the Massachusetts Cox's Sandpiper (hey! this IS a game, folks), but that bird is no match. I have to close with the thought that probably every one of us would know what this individual is, were we to watch it for a long moment in life. Nice bird, Joe.