ML84118411

Age

Not specified

Sex

Not specified

Observation details

This bird was found late in day on this date by Jim Royer. It was a “3 to 4 kilometer” walk out to the Morro Bay sandspit from the intersection of Los Osos Valley and Army roads (private dirt road with some mail boxes next to Los Osos Valley Road with room for a few cars to park). The trail follows the “road” past the home and then out and over the sandspit to the ocean. As I hurried along the trail, I saw a group of three birders crossing over the sandspit. After crossing over the sandspit, it was another “2 or 3 kilometers” north to where the godwit was seen. I was able to catch up with the three birders (Jon Dunn, Brad Schram and Nick Armstrong) just before we reached Tom Edell, Kaaren Perry and Mike Stiles who were looking at the godwit. We worked the bird over the next half-hour or so until sunset and I was able to obtain some reasonable photos. It was clearly smaller than the Marbled Godwits with shorter legs and a shorter bill (pale color at base that I wasn’t able to put a name on but I think the others were saying pink…). It clearly showed much white in the rump area with black horizontal barring that became heavier on the whitish tail. The whitish supercilium was very pronounced. The upperpart feathers had more gray and dark brown tones rather than the warm brown tones of the Marbled Godwits. The coverts were blackish or at least dark brown and appeared to have complete white fringes. The primaries extended past the tip of the tail. The underparts were generally whitish but there was a fairly strong orange wash to breast and foreneck.

Technical information

Model

Canon PowerShot SD4000 IS

ISO

1250

Focal length

18.6 mm

Flash

Flash did not fire, auto

f-stop

f/5.3

Shutter speed

1/1000 sec

Dimensions

1217 pixels x 912 pixels

Original file size

297.1 KB