About Sharp-tailed Sandpipers:

So if there's hundreds of Sharp-tailed Sandpipers moving through Alaska,
but we only get a few juveniles on the West Coast, I'd be curious about the
following points:

a.) whether they're juveniles, or whether adults are also in these flocks

b.) where they're moving to within Alaska, and if hundreds are moving out
of Asia into North America
c.) at what point do they leave our continent (presumably to fly out into
the Pacific?)

d.) can they be sat-tracked?


Concerning weather-related appearance:

in yrs when there seem to be few Sharps, there still seem to be goodly
numbers of later juv Pectorals. These later Pecs are presumably Siberian,
but that's a hunch, no data: there does seem to be two juv Pectoral
migration peaks in VCR, corresponding nicely to the idea that the Siberians
are later, since they've got further to come. As one would expect, it is in
this later whack of juv Pecs that the Sharps show up. Though the number of
juv Pecs in late Aug to mid-Sep seems to be pretty consistent regardless of
pers- istent pressure regimes and weather patterns, there does seem to be
more Sharps show up in autumns when the jet stream trundles one Pacific Low
after another through the SW BC region than in those of persistent Highs,
such as we have this yr.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
michael_price at mindlink.bc.ca