ML609404020
Contributor
Date
Location
- Age and sex
- Juvenile, Unknown sex - 1
- Playback
- Playback not used
Observation details
Overall, this was a large Tringa sandpiper, slight smaller and heavier set than the Greater Yellowlegs, Tringa melanoleuca, it was associating with. Upon my first view of the bird, I was struck by how much darker it was than I was expecting, with darker and thicker streaks on the crown, highlighting and contrasting with the white supraloral. The lores were black, while the eye ring was white, and there was a blackish smudge behind the eye. The cheeks were lighter, with thin streaks through. The chin was white, as was the throat. The bill appeared to be slightly shorter than that of the nearby Yellowlegs, but this may have been exaggerated by the thickness of the bill. It was notably recurved, though I believe this was exaggerated by the thicker mandible which had a bit of a gonydeal angle, as the maxilla actually appeared to be straight. The bill was grayish proximally and darker distally. The upper parts were quite dark, lacking any of the white spotting of the Greater Yellowlegs the bird was associating with, but all of the coverts and scapulars had lighter brown fringing. These feathers, along with the flight feathers, all appeared to be uniform in terms of wear, which suggests to me that the bird is a juvenile. In flight, the large white wedge extending up the back from the white rump was very obvious and quite unlike any typical North American Tringa. The tail was some darker scalloping, but was much whiter than those of the Yellowlegs. The center of the throat was clean white, contrasting with the strongly streaked nape of the neck. A few darker spots extended from the bend of the wing down sides of the chest, with a couple on the flanks; otherwise the underparts were clean white. The legs were dull olive green. With the combination of the olive-green legs, slightly up-turned bicolored bill, and white wedge extending far up the back, there is no question that this bird was a Greenshank. Nordmann’s Greenshank, Tringa guttifer, an endangered species with a low global population, has never been recorded in North America, but is worth considering as a possible confusion species. It is my understanding that Nordmann’s Greenshank is a distinctly pale gray bird, with much yellower legs and base to the bill. Based on a little bit of research on the Macaulay Library, it also looks like Nordmann’s Greenshank has thin white edges to the scapulars and coverts. Though not the best quality, this photo in the from Thailand has a good comparison between the two Greenshank species: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/504570161.
Additional species
Technical information
- Camera
- iPHone SE 2.0
- Microphone
- internal
- Accessories
- Original file size
- 95.77 MB