Friday, September 23, 2011

the rarest phalarope

There are very few records of Wilson's Phalarope along the lakeshore; my understanding is that Whitefish and the Indiana group have about one each in the last 30 years. You can understand our confusion then, when a medium sized shorebird with dark wings and a white rump appeared in front of us before Tim put a name to it earlier in the week.
Based on the gray body but pale edged retained juvenile wing coverts it looks to be in first winter plumage.
Dave Pavlik spotted this Whimbrel that flew past calling yesterday. It was a year bird that I was expecting to miss at this point.
Remarkably two Baird's sandpipers today were also year birds; these are most common the last week of August, but somehow have been avoiding me. I didn't think I would miss them, but it would be embarassing to have done so.

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