Hi Tweets,

Ruth Sullivan writes:

>The reason these photos were published was to recieve an opinion as to its
>identity from authorities
>from Japan or other countries where stints are local and/or regular, not
>the U.S.

Ruth, thanks for putting your mystery bird before the howling hordes of
shorebird junkies on Tweeters for comment; that takes courage. But, hey,
we're all friends here and really encourage this sort of contribution. By
helping you, it helps us all. Letting Dennis put the birds onto the Web was
a *great* idea; a great use of the Web. Trying to come to a workable ID
really offered a challenge: those yellow legs make it one strange-looking
little critter. It was really fun, like a good mystery novel, putting
together clues to reach a provisional ID. And I hope that the fact that the
features on this bird disallow the ID as a Long-toed Stint doesn't prevent
you from putting other mysteries up here to challenge us, or deter you from
posting your trip-lists. They are both a good contribution to our awareness
of Cascadian shorebirds.

As far as expertise goes, many of us, whether armed with degrees or amateur,
have prepared ourselves to find rarities like Long-toed, Red-necked and
Little Stints by learning *everything* we can about the common species in
all their various guises: juvenile, Basic and Alternate plumages, and the
same about the Eurasian stints. We *want* to see these birds, and we want to
be *ready* when shows up. When a rare shorebird shows up it's usually
conspicuously different, though some rarity ID's--say a juv Red-necked
Stint--can start off with a 'there's something funny about that shortstuff
juv Semi with the loooong primary projection' kind of puzzlement. It's
become cliche, but it still is one of the best approaches to looking for
rarities, an old Med School saying: 'If you see hoofprints in the sand,
think horses not zebras.' For a really funny account of how to look for
rarities, I'd suggest reading the chapter called 'Inner Birding' in Jack
Connor's totally cool book The Complete Birder.

It's *much* more often the regular species in unfamiliar postures or context
or unusual plumage that defy easy identification. As a group of us found out
a couple of years ago at Iona, every one of us seeking to add a very rare
species to our life-list, and working very hard to turn a Juv/Basic 1 Dunlin
into the Curlew Sandpiper just seen earlier, it was the the commoner bird
that was much harder to identify as it was in a plumage not usually seen
here, and with which we were completely unfamiliar (middle phot, p 120,
Facts on File Field Guide to North American Shorebirds, Richard J Chandler;
a great little shorebird ID book if you can find it). So a series of slides
of this bird--whatever it may eventually turn out to be, whether Western or
Semipalmated, or Jack B's possible Semi X Least hybrid (jeez, that's be one
for the books!)--are invaluable as teaching tools. Thank you very much for
giving us this opportunity to learn and relearn some of the finer points of
small-shorebird identification.

Michael Price The Sleep of Reason Gives Birth to Monsters
Vancouver BC Canada -Goya
mprice at mindlink.net