A quick flick through Google images of both species seems to show that Little Stint never has this triangle, but Sanderling sometimes can, except in winter plumage where I couldn't see it at all (or maybe its just less distinct given the plumage colouration). Obviously thats just based on my (very limited) whizz through Google Images, but it would suggest that whilst not necessarily diagnostic, it is a feature that if present would point to Sanderling rather than Little Stint. Perhaps a bigger sample size would reveal more certainty either way.
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I agree that the photos on the Audenshaw thread are really excellent. When I got home on the Friday I was certainly glad that there was some evidence of the Little Stint! It didn't seem so rufous in the flesh but what a little beauty. I confess I had no idea to look at ocular rings, but one thing I wanted to mention was another feature I did note. We were watching it from the wall of No 1 and all the birds briefly flew a few metres up the bank. I noticed the tail of the Stint had a black line through with clean white either side on the entire tail. This is a known feature of Temminck's Stint, but I wondered if anyone would expect it on adult Little Stint? I only have my Collins, and it shows juvenile Little Stint as having grey at the end of the tail with white up nearer the rump and nothing about the adult plumage.
I just hope there are a few birds still to appear, this week has been tortuous as I've been in Newbury and Audy has been awash with good stuff
It was with considerable interest this week that I tried to keep tabs on the passage of terns and waders through some of G.M 's premier sites, (waders especially being close to my heart).
It was intriguing that the Little Stint found by Simon Gough and his friend Jim on May 6th at Audenshaw cunningly switched with a lone Sanderling (on the following day?) and temporarily threw a number of experienced birders into considering for a while that it was a second Stint. - Easily done without other waders alongside for size comparison, when you think you're seeing what you expect to see, and let's be honest, at some time or another, we've all been there.
Enough of the preamble then. With some really excellent images posted on the Audenshaw sightings thread I started perusing the photos of the Little Stint and of several different Sanderlings.
Apart from any structural or plumage difference in these species, and also apart from the widely known odd fact that uniquely among the calidrids, Sanderling lacks a hind toe, it struck me that all the Sanderling images show at the rear of the bird's often faint eye-ring is a tiny white post-ocular triangle, (Tony Coatsworth's image of May 7th shows this to good effect, but to greater or lesser degree this is apparent on the images by John Rayner, and by Peter Nolan Woolley as well).
The Little Stint photos of May 6th of Andy Makin and of Rob Creek show a clear perfectly round eye ring with no hint of a post-ocular triangle as displayed by the Sanderlings.
I can find no mention in literature available to me of this potential difference as an additional support feature in identification of a lone bird when judging size can be tricky, and obviously a sample of one Little Stint as a yardstick is of questionable reliability at this stage.
The only fieldguide which depicts a Sanderling with this degree of accuracy (i.e showing a tiny post-ocular) is my old "Birds of Europe" by Lars Jonsson;- my Collins (the old one), does not.
Any contribution to this admittedly fairly obscure point would be most welcome, and a perusal of the excellent range of photos on the sightings thread will illustrate what I am on about.
Thanks to the superb range of photos available, I may have learned something.
Regards,
Mike P
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