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Willet Tringa semipalmata. Formerly in a genus of it's own Catoptrophorus and originally described as Scolopax semipalmata by Gmelin in 1789.
Willet has traditionally been considered a single species and indeed still is officially and by most people. The fact that the two subspecies were possibly contenders for splitting came to my notice when Elis and I found the first documented record of the species in the state of São Paulo. During research for the article that we wrote about the event...

Rick and Elis

A short one week trip to Texas and Louisiana was designed to catch up with some of the arctic breeding waders that pass through the USA on their way north form the Neotropics. There are two flyways involved here, the Mississippi Americas and Atlantic Americas.
We gave a presentation on the Saturday evening to a packed hall of some 70 members of the LOS. The presentation started by talking about the importance of the inter-tidal zones of the world stressing how they are greatly threatened...

Rick and Elis

Dotterels are among the most attractive of Charadrius plover. They are hard to catch up with and live in soe of the remotest places on the planet along with many otgher waders. For these reasons Dotterel hold a special place in most birders' hearts.
They breed in uplands and arctic tundra where the vegetation is sparse and short, in the UK they breed at the top of Cairngorm in the Scottish Highlands in their westernmost outpost. They breed across Scandinavia and Russia as far as the Chukotskiy...

Rick and Elis

First thing we went to the East Jetty to check out a report that an American Oystercatcher had been seen loafing in among the many Black Skimmers that spend much time sitting on the beach and sandbank. Unfortunately the covered look-out point didn't afford us much cover as there was a strong wind coming in off the sea so the rain was coming in almost horizontally. Try as we might we couldn't locate this bird and as the weather was so atrocious we decided to head for a back-up site, the one we missed...

Rick and Elis

The day started misty so we took our time having breakfast at the lodge then headed out for the day stopping for some supplies first.
Today's target was to find Baird's Sandpiper by hook or by crook, it having eluded us the previous day despite the help of Steve and Donna. We had listened to the call several times and studied the books to make sure we were familiar with the summer plumage of this difficult bird and so were well prepared to sift through many sandpipers. The very first bird...

Rick and Elis