Little Stint/Red-necked Stint, Sydney (1 Viewer)

tunpin.ong · Dec 2, 2006

Hi,
This is probably one of the most difficult ID features when in non-breeding plumage. In Australia as well as along East Asian - Australasian flyway, all black-legged small stint in non-breeding plumage can be assumed to be Red-necked. However, there should be a small number of Little Stints among them but it is almost impossible to tell them apart, unless in breeding plumage.

Friday 1 Dec afternoon, I photographed a small number of Red-necked Stints. Among them, one individual in particular showed smaller head and longer tibia. It was fairly easy to pick it up among 10+ Red-necked Stints.

I am attaching some photos with suspected stint and ordinary Red-necked Stint together, trying to compare leg length, bill shape, primary wing projection, etc.

Appreciate on your comments.

Note:
Pic1723 - the suspected stint in the middle and the Red-necked Stint in front.

Regards,

halftwo · Dec 2, 2006

Tunpin,
This is a real challenge but I think you could have one here. The plumage differences are very small, & as the book says, "best regarded as inditerminable". But the structural differences are there - longer legs, in particular look good. The breast band reaching further toward the centre of the breast looks OK too.
Wouldn't stake my life on it though.
Halftwo

marklhawkes · Dec 2, 2006

In Red-necked Stint, the primary projection should be more noticeable than Little Stint, extending beyond the tail tip. Although it is hard to tell in these photos, as the primaries are being held at a funny angle.

raymondjohn · Dec 3, 2006

Dear Tunpin

There was a bird at Penryhn rd Botany that was coming out of breeding plumage much later than all the other rednecked stints. A friend and I took a very close look(using a couple of fieldguides) and concluded that it was probably a rednecked stint. It has been around for a couple of weeks and is moulting.

Would this be the place you saw the bird ? Either way it is very hard to pick.

bestwishes

raymondjohn

tunpin.ong · Dec 3, 2006

Hi Raymond,

I am attaching the breeding plumaged Red-necked photographed earlier on 19/11/2006 for comparison.

Back to the questionable stint photographed 2/12/2006. I am attaching another solo photo showing the tail feather. It seems that there is a soft feather extending from the tail. It could be the elongated central tail feather.

Regards,

raymondjohn said:
Dear Tunpin

There was a bird at Penryhn rd Botany that was coming out of breeding plumage much later than all the other rednecked stints. A friend and I took a very close look(using a couple of fieldguides) and concluded that it was probably a rednecked stint. It has been around for a couple of weeks and is moulting.

Would this be the place you saw the bird ? Either way it is very hard to pick.

bestwishes

raymondjohn

raymondjohn · Dec 3, 2006

Hi Tun Pin

Lovely photo of the rednecked stint coming out of breeding colour. Regarding your earlier comment regarding the length of tibia and head size so much depends on the light and angle in photos. I will be honest and say that I don't know quite what to make of the tail.

Recently on some days we have been seeing over 40 stints. Graham and I will be back at Botany early Tuesday morning and tide permitting we will go through every bird.

However I doubt if my skills would be good enough to make the call.

best wishes

raymondjohn

PS. did you see that a suspected Amreican goldern plover has turned up in SA.

Dave B · Dec 3, 2006

marklhawkes said:
In Red-necked Stint, the primary projection should be more noticeable than Little Stint, extending beyond the tail tip. Although it is hard to tell in these photos, as the primaries are being held at a funny angle.

Hi Mark,

Is this actually the case? From the lit I have been looking at I got the impression that it is Little that has the longer primary projection.

See here:

http://www.birdinfo.com/stint.html#Figure 2a

and here:

http://homepage2.nifty.com/stints/calidris/calidris-1.html

but I don't have access to a whole lot of literature.

Thanks

Dave

marklhawkes · Dec 3, 2006

Dave B said:
Hi Mark,

Is this actually the case? From the lit I have been looking at I got the impression that it is Little that has the longer primary projection.

I have only seen two Red-necked Stints (one in Ireland and one in Cambridgeshire, UK), but both appeared much more attenuated at the rear, with longer looking closed wings. The new Waders of Europe, Asia and America (Taylor 2005), also illustrates it as such on the plates. However, Rare Birds of Britain and Europe (Lewington 1991), states that although Red-necked Stint is more attenuated than Little Stint, the primary projection is similar. Shorebirds (Hayman 1986) states that Red-necked is "longer winged". Confussing!

JANJ · Dec 3, 2006

Dave is right, and depending on which literature you check, because it differs. Jonsson mention RNS as having longer wings, but primary projection as long, or shorter than LS due to longer tertials in RNS, and that middle tail feathers are obviously long which often makes primaries fall short of the tail tip. D. Paulson (Shorebirds of N. America) mentions that LS has slightly longer wings than RNS projecting slightly farther beyond tail. Message & Taylor (Waders) mentions primary projection as short to medium for LS, medium to long in RNS and as being 'attenuated with long wings and tail'
In The Shorebird Guide, (nice book BTW) it´s said that both RNS and LS has a long primary projection. So, what is a long primary projection, is it the projection beyond the tail, or is it beyond the tertials? Beyond the tertials of course, as in Chiffchaff and Willow. That means LS often has wing tip projecting beyond the tail, while RNS has a tail projecting beyond the wing tip. However variation and moult, makes it difficult to rely to much in a character like this.

JanJ

JANJ · Dec 3, 2006

Another go.

A good starter is to age the stint and to me it looks like a 1st winter, contrast worn retained coverts agains fresher scapulars, although some of the scapulars seems to have been moulted in a while ago. Since juvenile RNS usually has paler inner greater coverts with a dark shaft streak, a good distinction from juvenile LS, and looking at these feathers in the subject stint, althoug worn, they seem to have wholly a dark center, while median and lesser coverts looks paler with a pronounced dark shaft streak. By looking at this image:

http://www.birdforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=65474

and blowing it up to aprox.300% one sees that the outermost greater covert, close to the tertials, has a distinct dark shaft streak. These are good characters for RNS while I´m not saying that it is one (!). The structure and the bill shape does not differ that much from the rest of the RNS in Tun Pins great images, the head size and the forehead shape does however differ slightly. Difficult area though!

JanJ

Edward woodwood · Dec 3, 2006

The cov. feature is a little quoted one Jan, there's also a point about the scaps being generally darker centred in one species rather than the other but the details escape me without looking it up (and there are, as always, a fair number of individuals showing contrary features!) Worth getting hold of Grant and Jonsson's stint paper from 84 (i think) which deals with projection issues comprehensively

I've seen rather more RNS than LS but would struggle with an instance like this. Calls will split them instantly but otherwise... this bird has nothing that really shouts LS to me from the pix. Bill appears short and thick based and I wouldn't infer anything 'structure' wise. Hard to say anything worth a row of beans really...!!! :h?:

Feeding action is a good indicator also... there hare been some good threads on this pair in the past

JANJ · Dec 3, 2006

Yes Tim, darker centered scapulars in Little, especially in the rear region and more all over in 1st winter, if we shall follow Jonsson (and we shall ) in his article (84). However if you look at TP images here one could think that the closest one here:

http://www.birdforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=65449

is a LS.

This features earlier (age) RNS:

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=69443&highlight=red-necked+stint

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=69260&highlight=red-necked+stint

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=68546&highlight=red-necked+stint

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=68054&highlight=red-necked+stint

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=67928&highlight=red-necked+stint

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=51485&highlight=red-necked+stint

JanJ

halftwo · Dec 3, 2006

I aged it as you did Jan, then looking at Shorebirds I did not find anything conclusive on plumage - a lot of 'varying this and that'. Also took the meaning tertial/primary projection thing as you said but couldn't make out much from the photos on that score.
It did strike me that this bird shows the scapular/mantle edge to be a darker line - not shown on any other bird of this group - but know nothing of the significance - or otherrwise of this.
H

Dave B · Dec 4, 2006

Tim Allwood said:
The cov. feature is a little quoted one Jan, there's also a point about the scaps being generally darker centred in one species rather than the other but the details escape me without looking it up (and there are, as always, a fair number of individuals showing contrary features!) Worth getting hold of Grant and Jonsson's stint paper from 84 (i think) which deals with projection issues comprehensively

I've seen rather more RNS than LS but would struggle with an instance like this. Calls will split them instantly but otherwise... this bird has nothing that really shouts LS to me from the pix. Bill appears short and thick based and I wouldn't infer anything 'structure' wise. Hard to say anything worth a row of beans really...!!! :h?:

Feeding action is a good indicator also... there hare been some good threads on this pair in the past

I think this is a really helpful discussion, and one that I am benefitting a lot from, as one who has seen a number of poosible LS this past autumn.

With regard to call Tim, the practical problem I find is knowing which bird is making which call, as these birds rarely occur singly. I often have this problem as well with sand plovers. Generally they only call when flushed, and then everything is calling at once!

Feeding behaviour is of course, more subjective than plumage features. I have thought that LS makes more pecks per given time period, but have never managed to time them!

The problem is that intraspecies variability is often greater than interspecies variability. Many of the differentiating features given in literature only hold good for some individuals.

I guess we're looking for a suite of features to id these birds, and also recognising that along the spectrum between obvious LS and obvious RNS, there are many that just can't be done, as Jane Turner has often pointed out.

Cheers

Dave

MKinHK · Dec 5, 2006

I keep chickening out of commenting on this one, but here goes.

When plumage and structure are contradictory I prefer to go with structure. When different features of the structure are contradictory I rather agree that you get to the end of the line for photo ID with such a difficult pair - seeing the bird in the field might give you more - it certainly helps in HK.

Having got the caveat lined up here goes . . .

For me the squarish head (as opposed to bull-necked), belly parallel to the ground (as opposed to potbellied) and longer legs suggest LS, but the blunt-tipped bill spoils the party, looking slender, but not atypical for RNS.

For what its worth I think the super emphasises the squarish headshape, again suggesting LS.

On balance I come down on "LS with an abnormally blunt-tipped bill" as having fewer inconsistent features to account for (1) than "very slender RNS with a slender bill and unusually long legs" (2 or 3) . . . but I would not wager more than a half of lager on the outcome.

Very happy to hear other views.

lou salomon · Dec 5, 2006

an example of a blunt looking bill in LS (taken in jan 2004 in dobrogea, romania). i don't know how abnormal a blunt tipped bill in little stint is but especially in this pic i wondered if it was the real billshape or just some water/mud around the bill making it look blunter tipped? have a look

tunpin.ong · Dec 6, 2006

From Lou's photo, the smaller and rounder head simply does not look like a Red-necked Stint at all. (So this is what we call the jizz?).

Talking about the blunt tip bill. Not sure how accurate we can go with the tip. I have examples of one Red Knot at same site on other day that showed its bill shape between 10 minutes(I can bet with my head that it was the same individual as there were only one Red Knot that afternoon and Red Knot was my favorite and I was concentrating on this fellow). The 3rd example is another individual later on and just illustrate how 'flexible' the bill tip can be.

lou salomon · Dec 6, 2006

great pic of that billtip! and the first one shows how a drop can trick you.

doug_newman · Dec 6, 2006

Again using my headspace theory, the lone bird in pic 3 does not seem to have enough headspace to be red-necked stint and the same bird seems to appear in at least one other photo. All of the rest of the birds seem to have sufficient headspace to be Red-necked. There seems to well be a case for at least one little stint in that group.

Regards.
Doug.

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