ML30838311

Age and sex

Juvenile, Unknown sex - X

Media notes

The bird here kindly obliged my wish to capture in my photos something of the markings on its upper wing. Flight feathers are black with a white wing stripe that begins on the inner primaries, as shown here on the only-partially-extended right wing. (Please note: The seeming black gap in the white wing stripe is illusory. It is caused by the folding inward of the outer wing, with its black primaries rolling back over the secondaries.) Also important to note in this photo is the large reddish-washed spot in front of the pulled-back right wing. This, along with the buff in the flanks, occurs in some juveniles of this species (see, e.g., photo 84a, p. 278, of R. Chandler, "Shorebirds of North America, Europe, and Asis: A Phtographic Guide," Princeton U. Press, 2009). The juvenile bird showing this reddish spot in the just-cited source is the falcinellus (norminate race), from northern Europe and northwestern Russia, which, according to the cited Chandler source, has a top-side that approaches black. That would seem to be true of this individual. On account of the buff flanks (see ML 30838351) and, in this photo, the reddish exposed area on the exposed breast at the front of the folded wing, I will on these accounts call this individual a juvenile. Also, the extremely dark topside, still well marked by clean, light-colored fringes (i.e., not highly worn feather fringes) may be more compatible with the falcinellus race (juvenile) than with the sibirica race, based solely on my book study, for I have no field experience with both races.

Observation details

The distance from our location on the trail around West Pond (near Bench #12) to the Broad-billed Sandpiper's foraging area was approximately 125 feet, as a very rough estimate. For visual study of this bird my wife and I shared a Nikon Fieldscope ED78 with 30x eyepiece (used for both observation and photography; re. latter, see below) and we each had Zeiss 7x42 binoculars. To provide documentation of this stellar rarity I took many photos of the bird using a hand-held SLR camera to shoot through a scope. I am providing herewith a total of 6 images obtained via digiscoping. Five of those images are different shots of the bird, but the sixth is a high-cropped version of the photo that originally shows the Broad-billed Sandpiper in the same frame as two Semipalmated Sandpipers, but that, as cropped in this instance, shows it alone. This cropped version may provide a better view of the details of this rare sandpiper, in particular, of its dramatically marked dark crown with a bright split supercilium. I took these photos (and others not enclosed) by using a 35mm SLR camera (Canon EOS Elan II E with attached Canon Lens EF, 50mm, 1:1.8 II lens set at infinity) to photograph through the eyepiece of a Nikon Fieldscope ED78 with 30x eyepiece. Exposure was automatic (with some center-field weighting), and the film used was Kodak Gold MAX 400 film (for color prints). The attached photos plus a few others were included in my report on this bird to the New York State Avian Records committe (NYSARC), and three of those photos were included in the NYSARC 1998 annual report concerning the acceptance of this species. That source may be consulted for a brief summary of the presence of this rarity at Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge (JBWR).

Technical information

Dimensions

479 pixels x 359 pixels

Original file size

48.57 KB