dowitcher finale

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: Since this mystery is still up I decided to take another look, hoping to find a "definitive answer". : As stated to excess, I think these are Short-billed because of the brightness, width, and general relatively perpendicular angle of the feather barring on the upperparts. Long-billed are sometimes illustrated with perpendicular barring, but I have yet to find a Long-billed photo with alternate scaps, etc. showing a pattern anywhere close to what is obvious on these birds. I'll keep looking. : Otherwise - : - In general the dark markings on the breast sides seem more like the remnants of the comparatively thick spot shapes typical of caurinus. Many of the markings seem fairly wide, extending a ways back into the feather interiors. Long-billed's thinner subterminal bars can and do wear into spot shapes, but my inexperienced impression is that they more typically should look finer and less prominent than what is apparent on these birds, particularly the left side of the left foreground bird. : - Upon closer (eye-straining) scrutiny, it looks like there ARE at least one or two fanned retrices visible on the far right bird, and the pale bars on these feathers look clearly wider than the dark bars to me. As stated, Long-billed should show dark bars of equal width or wider than the pale bars. : - Not sure if this is considered diagnostic, but the upper left bird appears to show a noticeable primary projection beyond the tertials, although it's very hard to tell what feathers are visible because of the low resolution of the scan. Long-billed, at least worn adults, aren't suppose to show any primary projection, while short-billed can show a small amount. : Beyond that I'm not sure what to look at, at least in this one photo. Looking forward to being enlightened if I'm missing something important. : Finally, after looking at even more caurinus photos it does appear that adults are quite variable. Some do show a range of features that might be considered to overlap with or trend into those mentioned for hendersoni. I guess there's no real reason to suspect these birds are anything other than brighter-end caurinus. : Cheers, : Phil

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