Well, it seems as if the overall feeling is that this bird is a
Semipalmated Sandpiper, which was my thought after viewing the four photos.
Thanks for the comments, all, although there were fewer of them than Ruth
originally hoped for when we posted the photos. Matt Heindel also sent me a
lengthy commentary, not posted on tweeters.

The bird is *not* one of the yellow-legged stints, Temminck's, Long-toed,
or Least. There are just too many things wrong with it, including bill
shape (too thick and bulbous at the end), breast color (both LESA and LTST
have buffy to brown wash across the breast), and, especially, primary
projection (the yellow-legged species scarcely have any). Temminck's is
eliminated immediately by its scalloped back coloration and long tail.

Of the black-legged species, it could be any of them, as I wouldn't be
surprised at occasional pale-legged individuals, especially younger
juveniles. I recall a long-ago note in British Birds entitled
"Yellow-legged Little Stint," for example. As Michael Price wrote (and
Michael did much the best job of writing about this--thanks!), you commonly
see juvenile Semipalmated with pale legs (I've seen them with olive-green
legs many times, but never bright yellow).

When I said "it could be any of them," I should have excluded Western. I
think the bill is too short for a Western, even a male, and too
bulbous-tipped. The shortest-billed male Westerns have a quite fine bill
tip. Also, no trace of the rufous upper scapulars typical of Western is a
fairly good way to eliminate that species.

If we assume the color pattern is more or less typical, Little Stint is
unlikely because of dullness, although, again as Michael pointed out, some
Littles are dull. Head pattern is more like Little or Red-necked, with the
prominent split supercilium, but Semipalmated apparently can look like that
(notwithstanding its listing as the best distinguishing mark between SESA
and RNST in a 1989 article by Per Alstrm and Urban Olsson, and included by
me in my shorebird book).

The bird does look amazingly long-legged, and you can see a first response
as Long-toed because of leg length and color, but otherwise it has few of
the field marks of that species. The tarsus length (below the knobby ankle)
is a constant, but the amount of leg you can see above that apparently
varies by how the bird is holding its legs, and it may well be that a hot
bird (it was a hot day, according to Ruth) extends its legs farther out
(cold birds squat, hot birds trot). Remember, you never see a bird's knee,
as it is completely within the plumage (if you have a chance to handle a
dead bird, it's easy to find).

So, it's probably a Semipalmated. When you can't distinguish between a
common and a rare species, guess which one it's most likely to be.

You've always heard of "variation on a theme," but for stint
identification, variation *is* the theme! One of the things that makes
birding fun, right?

Dennis

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 253-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 253-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416
http://www.ups.edu/biology/museum/museum.html