The presumed White-rumped Sandpiper that Ken Ranck reported as suspecting
(though it would not fly and expose its namesake field mark for him) at
Leonard's Pond late yesterday afternoon turns out to have indeed been one. I
watched it this morning for about 45 minutes between 9 and 10 a.m. This is
the
third record I know of for Rockingham County. The previous records, according
to
Clair Mellinger's Birds of Rockingham County, Virginia, were both from
Leonard's Pond, 2 September 1982 and 6 and 9 June 1992, two individuals seen
each
time.
The bird was in a brief flight as I got out of the car on arrival and the
white rump stood out; after that it hugged the ground feeding along the western
shore line in the water. I was able to study it at leisure in excellent
light through my Swarovsky scope's zoom lens, from 20x to 60x. The bird's
feeding pattern was to put its head down in the water for numerous brief
periods
and jab rapidly with its bill while doing so.
The first thing I looked for was the diagnostic red area at the base of the
lower mandible; it was easily visible with high magnification. Had the bird
been close to the road, I might have been able to see that with my
binoculars. Another critical field mark, the wingtips longer than the tail,
were
easily seen, particularly when the bird tilted its body down to feed, and the
wingtips could actually be seen crossed far enough to expose the back end of
the
tail to view from the bird's front. Since all three "points" usually came
together in one long swept-back point in the more usual view from the bird's
side, this frontal angle was most helpful. The legs were black, the bill
straight, and though this sounds strange, the bird gave the impression of being
both lanky and a little chunky at the same time. The chest was lightly
streaked; the belly was unstreaked, but there were a few very fine lines of
streaks
down the flanks. There was a distinct whitish supercilium which appeared to
both broaden slightly and intensify in its whiteness toward the rear of the
head. In the center of the upper back there were fine lines of black on a
gray background; at the very top and forward edge of the upper scapulars there
was a brief line of reddish, the reddish area not (yet) as wide as in
Sibley's plate of the bird in alternate plumage. The upper and lower scapulars
had
long, lance-head-shaped black marks in the centers of the feathers, not
shortened and more blocky or irregular as these marks had been on the Baird's
Sandpipers we have seen there several times in recent years. (Compare these
two
species' scapulars, which I find to be a quite distinctive field mark that can
be seen with binoculars if the birds are near enough, on p. 185 of the large
Sibley guide.)
Also present were 1 Killdeer, 4 Greater and 5 Lesser Yellowlegs (these were
often foraging well up in the pasture!), 1 Solitary and 2 Spotted Sandpipers
(one of the latter was well up in the pasture also), about a dozen Barn
Swallows and two American Pipits.
Leonard's Pond is just to the west on Faught's Road off of VA. Rt. 276, the
Weyer's Cave--Keezletown Road, near the southern edge of Rockingham County.
John Irvine
Harrisonburg, VA
You are subscribed to VA-BIRD. To post to this mailing list, simply send email
to va-bird@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. To unsubscribe, send email to
va-bird-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field.
