ML547665641
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Adult, Unknown sex - 1
Observation details
Lifer! It appears to be the same bird found by Bob Dunn back in January. I didn't realize this until I got home and took a closer look at my photos, but I did get a photo of it while it was still roosting on the western shoreline of the marsh (roughly here: 37.741428,-122.212203) at 9:25. Then at 10:05 several Willets started flying over to the boardwalk. It filled up pretty quickly, but the Ruff was one of the first few to arrive! It walked around for just a few seconds before (I assume) deciding any place on the boardwalk is as good as any other to tuck in for a bit. It pulled its bill out two or three times before the crowd of godwits and Willets made it harder to see. The entire flock was still out on the boardwalk when I left. It was a little smaller than I might have guessed but still noticeably larger than the dowitchers. My initial notes in the field said yellow legs, but they really seem to be more of a pinkish orange. After the legs, the next thing that stands out the most is the very short, straight bill, which was slightly more than half black with the base being a somewhat smudgy, light pink. Compared to the dowitchers, the face was quite plain and open, with a lot of white around the bill, but no strong supercilium or eyeline. With a very close look, I could see a thin, broken eye-ring. The scapulars are perhaps a subtler difference, but their pattern is very different from the other shorebirds: many of them appear almost black in the center with thick, well-defined pale-brown edges. Some also have a pale brown center inside the black, and some have very little black at all. The rachises (or shafts) contrasted from the vanes, being very pale through most of the black center of the feather, but then turning dark as it extended into the light brown tip. I know that's a lot of feather detail, but I include it because it's how I was able to identify the bird in my distance photos of the roost from over 400' away. The underside was all white aside from some small, faint spots on the breast and a little bit of very faint brown smudginess on the neck and flanks. The vent and undertail coverts were clean white - very different from the heavily patterned dowitchers and faintly barred or vermiculated Willets. My initial report said, "I'm so happy I'm gonna die!!!" That pretty well sums it up. I have lost track of, and have no desire to go back and figure out how many times I've tried to see this species, but I did go back and count how many times I've come down to this general area around Arrowhead Marsh for this species: eight. With that kind of track record, I can't say I had a ton of confidence coming back here yet again, but the reports over the last three days were so great, I couldn't pass it up. So it was pretty disappointing to walk out and see the boardwalk was empty. Someone yesterday said the flock flew away around 1 pm, so I thought maybe they had just chosen not to use the boardwalk today. I walked out there, scanned and when I couldn't find the Ruff, took some birding-at-home photos and was figuring I'd go back and drive over to Doolittle Pond where Eric Cameron saw this same bird on Saturday. I was walking back to my car, when I noticed someone else back near the boardwalk with a camera and bins. I decided to go back, say hi, and look with him for a bit. He mentioned he'd never seen a Ridgway's Rail before and was hoping they might show themselves. We looked around a bit, and I said I was a little surprised we couldn't see them right then because it was close to high tide. After a short while, he said he had to go, but he had only made it halfway off the boardwalk before I was whisper yelling, "Hey dude! (I hadn't asked his name) Ridgway's Rails!!" He came back and got the best views anyone could possibly ask for. Three of them walked right past us and then all swam directly underneath him. With how high the water was, they probably got within 5 or 6'! Eventually, he said thanked me and said he was on his way. I replied, "I hope this earns me some good birding karma!" Well less than 10 minutes later those first Willets started landing on the boardwalk, and I realized I needed to get off of there quick. The two or three that landed naturally took off again when I passed by, but it was clear they intended to stick around as more and more started flying in. I didn't even have to get all the way off the boardwalk but instead stopped at the end of the hand rails to see what had gathered so far, and there it was! All those times coming out here, all those hours of driving, scanning, and often shivering, I was hoping for at least some barely identifiable glance, but here it was, unobstructed and just chilling well under 100' away! I don't think it realistically gets any better than that.
Additional species
Technical information
- Model
- COOLPIX P1000
- ISO
- 400
- Focal length
- 467 mm
- Flash
- Flash did not fire
- f-stop
- f/7.1
- Shutter speed
- 1/200 sec
- Dimensions
- 3110 pixels x 2332 pixels
- Original file size
- 1.35 MB