[SBB] CCFS waterbird pond - Am. G-Plover, Ruff, and Pecs

[[[email protected]] (Mike Rogers)]

All,

Yesterday 11/9/06, I stopped by the CCFS waterbird pond shortly after 3:00pm. It took a little while to find the GOLDEN-PLOVER, but eventually I located it tucked away in the pickleweed edge at the southern edge of the vegetation growing in the pond. Over the next half hour, I managed decent looks and a few poor digiscoped photos. This is an odd bird, appearing to have colors and patterning more typical of a Pacific Golden-Plover, but the wing tip structure of an American Golden-Plover. Unlike previous American Golden-Plovers I have seen, this bird seemed more brown than gray, lacked a prominent contrasting white supercilium (this being more buff and blending with the rest of the face), had extensive buff in the face and especially the throat, and lacked the regular marbled gray breast splotching often associated with juveniles of this species (this being more smeared out and cloudy gray - perhaps due to wear on this late date?). For comparison, see the Arcata 1 Nov 2006 juvenile A
merican Golden-Plover photo on Joe Morlan's web page at

http://fog.ccsf.cc.ca.us/~jmorlan/gallery.htm

However, the extent and color of the buff-tan edgings and notches to our bird's coverts and tertials seem good for American Golden-Plover, the only yellow being confined to the flecks on the crown. Also, according to 

Johnson, O.W. & Johnson, P.M. 2004. Morphometric features of Pacific and 
American Golden-Plovers with comments on field identification. Wader Study 
Group Bull. 103: 42–49.

available at

http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu/wsg/pdf/wsgb-apr2004-golden-plovers.pdf

the only completely reliable field mark is the wing tip structure, which clearly matches that of an AMERICAN GOLDEN-PLOVER.

Other birds at the waterbird pond included a male RUFF (dull pinkish gray legs, photos taken), 2 PECTORAL SANDPIPERS (a non-limping male and a snoozing female), 1 COMMON SNIPE, and a SORA. Initially, I only noted 2 LESSER YELLOWLEGS, but later I saw more fly in and at least 7 were present, together with the Ruff, which had moved to the southeast corner of the pond by that time.

One of the BLACK-NECKED STILTS was radio-tagged, with Orange over Orange over Blue on the left leg and Green over Black on the right.

Mike Rogers
Sunnyvale

_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
South-Bay-Birds mailing list      ([[email protected]])
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
http://plaidworks.org/mailman/listinfo/south-bay-birds_plaidworks.org