Welcome back to tweeters, Alvaro; we've missed you!

A few points to make about your Rufous-necked Stint ideas.

(1) They're not known to double clutch (unlike teenagers with hotrods), but
the breeding biology has been scarcely studied. Nevertheless, even if they
did, a nest taken by a predator means a bird ready to migrate, so it
shouldn't matter what the mating system. If they're like some other
sandpipers, the females may actually migrate first, because in a number of
species females desert males after the eggs hatch.

(2) Enough Rufous-necked Stints breed in Alaska that some of them may be
caught up in Western or Semipalmated migration in this direction. I've
often wondered if that's why we get so many Sharp-tailed Sandpipers,
because the Pectorals with which they share the Siberian tundra are mostly
migrating into this hemisphere in the fall. Of course this wouldn't
explain Long-toed, Little and Temminck's records down here, but there are
more Rufous-necked (which is not more common than the others in Siberia,
except on the Chukotka Peninsula).

(3) I have no doubt there are juvenile Rufous-necked on the West Coast
every fall, but they are *so* hard to distinguish from Semipalmated that,
at a place like Iona, where there are a lot of Semis, they could go
overlooked. I agree with you entirely that we see Rufous-necked early
because they're more obvious then, and the hordes of Westerns haven't built
up to astronomical proportions yet. As far as I can tell, their habitat
preferences are identical, and they should flock together.

Dennis Paulson, Director phone: (206) 756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax: (206) 756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail: dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416