ML564730121

Age and sex

Immature Unknown sex - 1

Media notes

An apparent first-spring, female Hudsonian Godwit found on 25 April 2023 by Steve Lima here photographed by Curtis A. Marantz on 26 April 2023 along the Bernardo Bay arm of Lake Hodges, San Diego County, California. The dull wings are likely indicative of a first-spring bird and the dull coloration and very long bill are suggestive of a female.

Observation details

This was a relatively large shorebird with a long bill, a small head, a medium-length neck, a plump node, long wings, and relatively long legs. The bill tapered from a base of medium depth to a finely pointed tip along a culmen that smoothly curved upward to the tip. I thought this bird's bill was long even for a godwit, in that it appeared to be about two-and-a-half times as long as the head was wide. The forehead was weakly sloping and the crown was gently rounded to somewhat flattened, both on a head that was small for the bird's size. The neck was shorter and stouter than that of the yellowlegs, and the body was conspicuously plump, full-chested, and with a posture that was closer to horizontal than diagonal, but also with a hunch-backed appearance while foraging. The wings were conspicuously long, with a primary projection that was about two-thirds the length of the exposed tertials on wingtips that extended a short distance beyond the tip of a tail that was short and seemingly square-tipped with rounded corners, but it was difficult to see well given that it was mostly obscured by the closed wings. I thought I could see the tips of at least two primaries extending beyond the longest tertial, but it was difficult to be sure given the distance from which the observations were made. The legs were relatively long and slim, but I was unable to see the feet clearly. This was a relatively well-marked bird, but it was not overly colorful for a spring Hudsonian Godwit. Moreover, the front part of the face was either wet or soiled by the mud into which the bird was probing, so just about everything before the eye appeared solidly blackish with a sharply demarcated edge that extended down the side of the face just before the eye. What I could see of the forehead and crown were sooty in color with lighter brown markings that produced a mottled to weakly streaked appearance. Demarcating the lower edge of the dark cap was a dull supercilium that was light gray to pale buff, and which appeared to expand a bit behind the eye, though I could not see if it continued before the eye due to the above-noted soiling. The auriculars were light grayish and finely streaked, but I could not see if there was a loral stripe. In general, the auriculars, the back and sides of the neck, and the neck and breast were similarly marked with fine, dark streaking on light gray to grayish-buff background. I did think the throat and the lower part of the face were paler back to a point just below the eye, where the paler color blended into the grayish auriculars. The mantle was sooty brown with sandy-brown fringes that created a coarsely mottled appearance that extended from the junction of the back with the neck down to the insertion points of the wings. The scapulars were more boldly marked, and seemingly with blackish centers that contrasted with irregular fringes that included larger notches or semicircles that were yellowish-buff and creating a pattern of coarse spangling that contrasted sharply with the plain wing-coverts. When seen at a distance, the wings appeared to be mostly medium-brown and rather plain, but when I saw the wings in good light, I noted a subtle pattern that contrasted medium to dark brown centers with diffuse fringes of sandy-brown to create an indistinct pattern of scaling that appeared uniform throughout the median and greater coverts, which were lighter and plainer than the scapulars. I thought the small, innermost tertial contrasted a black center with a series of small, yellowish-buff notches along the inner edge and possibly a narrower edge of this same color, though I could not be sure. The remaining tertials had a pattern not unlike that on the coverts, with darker brown centers that contrasted with a diffuse edge of a lighter sandy-brown to produce a weakly striped pattern in the distal part of the closed wing. Contrasting with the generally duller tertials, the exposed primary tips appeared to be uniformly blackish, which confounded my ability to distinguish the feathers in the wingtip; however, several inner primaries that I could see at times under the tertials in the closed wing did appear to have paler tips of sandy-brown that facilitated my seeing that there were several primary tips falling short of the longest tertial. The closed wings generally obscured the rump and tail, but when this bird bent over to forage, I could at times see white on either the rump or the uppertail coverts, and also that the tail was mostly sooty-brown to blackish, but with narrow tips of white to pale buff and at least some whitish along the outer edges, though this may have represented undertail coverts rather than the outer edges of the tail. The underparts did not contrast strongly with the upperparts, but the pattern and to some extent the coloration were a bit different. As noted above, I thought the throat was pale and probably whitish, but the foreneck and breast were sandy-brown with what appeared to be fine, dark streaking. The flanks contrasted bold barring that appeared to be sooty to blackish and most apparent on the foreflanks, from which they extended downward to the sides of the belly, but also a suffusion of chestnut on underparts that were whitish in places but chestnut in others. Behind the longer bars that extended downward just behind the shoulder, the bars were shorter on the rear flanks, but they continued, albeit less conspicuously back through the rear flanks and even onto the sides of the undertail coverts, which had short, blackish bars that were separated by white along their outer edges. I thought the center of the belly was weakly marked or unmarked, but also that it combined light chestnut and whitish, and I also noted that the undertail coverts had a chestnut suffusion amid whitish, though I thought the distal feathers were more whitish. The bill was clearly bicolored, with the basal half or so a rather deep, orange color before blending to black on the distal half. The eyes were dark, but I was unable to discern their precise color. The legs and what I could see of the feet were medium-gray throughout.

Technical information

Model

ILCE-7RM5

Lens

FE 200-600mm F5.6-6.3 G OSS

ISO

500

Focal length

600 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire

f-stop

f/6.3

Shutter speed

1/800 sec

Dimensions

1439 pixels x 895 pixels

Original file size

1.39 MB