ML31460431
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult, Unknown sex - X
Media notes
This photo was taken at the end of our visit with the Surfbird. It provided a crisp, side-on view showing a crisply, cleanly marked bird with considerable of its breeding attire, including some rich, rufous scapular makings nicely complemented by much the same color in the red-granite rock of the jetty. The photo shows a stout, healthy-looking, hefty-billed creature standing alert with the waters of the channel rushing between the granite boulders, an appropriate backdrop for this creature of rocky, wave-lashed shores.
Observation details
All of the Surfbird photos were taken from the outer (i.e., eastern) 60% of the South Jetty: RULING OUT FOUR ID-COMPETITORS RELATIVE TO SURFBIRD PURPLE SANDPIPER (PUSA): In addition to differing in bill shape, PUSA’s bill is yellow at both mandible bases; Surfbird’s different-shaped bill has a large orange base only on the lower mandible (ML31460431); PUSA’s entire tail and uppertail coverts are dark vs. Surfbird’s widely black-tipped tail with white tail base/uppertail coverts (ML31460411). PUSA has its rufous scapular color in feather fringes, but Surfbird’s is in large internal ovals (ML31460431) ROCK SANDPIPER (ROSA): ROSA and PUSA have many similarities, and the exclusionary analyses for PUSA apply also to ROSA. BLACK TURNSTONE: Several factors rule this out, including, strikingly, its bright white back and bright white area at topside wing base anterior to the white wing stripe, very different than Surfbird (ML31460411). GREAT KNOT: Among other factors, its bill is wrong because it has a much longer and entirely black bill vs. the differently shaped, colored, and sized bill of Surfbird (ML31460431).
Technical information
- Model
- Canon EOS 10D
- ISO
- 400
- Focal length
- 210 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire
- f-stop
- f/11.0
- Shutter speed
- 1/1000 sec
- Dimensions
- 1886 pixels x 1296 pixels
- Original file size
- 504.21 KB