Long-tailed Jaeger / Skua Hokkaido August? (1 Viewer)

I went on a weekend trip to eastern Hokkaido at the end of July. The weather was awful, fog and rain most of the time. I have several birds I will ask about, but this one stands out for me.

I saw this bird near Furen-ko (Nemuro), and at the time I assumed it was a Tern, but now I think it's a Jaeger/Skua because of the bill shape and size and the bird's colouring, especially the collar that you can see. This collar is 'real' but its intensity may be partly a photo artifact - the shot was in dawn light in rainy fog.

There are pelagic birding trips from a port not far from here (we wanted to do this but the trips weren't running because the boatmen were maintaining their boats; anyway given the fog (our plane, a Boeing 777, couldn't land and was diverted 500kms) it would have been pointless), and though this photo is on the mainland, Jaeger/Skua is not rare or bizarre here, and actually according to the books more likely than any Tern.

I wonder if this might be long-tailed Jaeger which has molted its long central tail feathers at the end of the summer? The head pattern is very neat cf. Parasitic Jaeger, and moreso the other possibilities Pomarine or South Polar. And the undercarriage is very white - the Japanese name for Long-tailed Jaeger is 'White-bellied Jaeger'.

Any comments gratefully received.

Doesn't look at all like a skua/jaeger to me. No idea if it's at all likely in the location but I wondered if this is a red-necked phalarope. Possibly half-way to losing it's red neck?

Looks like a Plover sp to me - not sure which but at a guess maybe Greater Sand Plover?

Or even one of the E Asian Lapwings?

It looks like a Sandplover to me too - certainly not a Skua.

Cheers

Roy

Thanks for the replies.

There weren't any visible shorebirds around this place, but the next day we went a hundred or so km further north, and there were lots of Lesser Sand Plovers. I guess this is what it must be. Thanks very much. With just these two photos, and a single bird, and thinking it was a tern to begin with, my mind then moved to what seemed to me the next most likely thing.

I'd say Mongolian Sandplover



Andy

andyadcock said:

I'd say Mongolian Sandplover

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Mongolian Sand Plover is nowadays called Lesser Sand Plover.

MacNara said:

Mongolian Sand Plover is nowadays called Lesser Sand Plover.

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Thought it was the other way round?

There are five races, and the large east Asian forms, C. m. mongolus and C. m. stegmanni, are sometimes given specific status as Mongolian plovers,

Charadrius mongolus. If the taxonomic split is accepted, lesser sand plover as then defined becomes Charadrius atrifrons, including the three races atrifrons, pamirensis and schaeferi.

A

andyadcock said:

Thought it was the other way round?

There are five races, and the large east Asian forms, C. m. mongolus and C. m. stegmanni, are sometimes given specific status as Mongolian plovers,

Charadrius mongolus. If the taxonomic split is accepted, lesser sand plover as then defined becomes Charadrius atrifrons, including the three races atrifrons, pamirensis and schaeferi.

A

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Nope, still Lesser Sand Plover; hasn't been split :t:

And agree, this bird is LSP for me too.

andyadcock said:

Thought it was the other way round?

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Well my thirty-year-old Japanese book has Mongolian, and the newer books say Lesser Sand. But Brazil does point out that eastern forms are sometimes split as Mongolian, with western as Lesser Sand, but I think it's not official.

Anyway, whatever about this, I appreciate your help as always.

For me, my misidentification here is an example of the power of expectations and the perils of judging size and distance (that Niels Larsen always warns of in these threads).

I live about as far from the sea as you can get in Japan (except for the middle of Hokkaido) and I don't get there very often (a lot of the nearest sea at Osaka and north and south of there is basically a 200km-long (or more) concrete wall with some gulls and cormorants but nothing else), and I think this would be only the third or fourth time to see Lesser Sand Plover for me.

Little Ringed Plovers are in my area for a few weeks every year (occasionally breed), and a few Long-billed. Terns (Whiskered, Little and Common) and even gulls (Black-tailed and Common) are more regular than these plovers on our local pond.

So, for the bird I posted, because of the location and the fact that there were gulls around, but no shorebirds, I was expecting a seabird: so I saw a fairly small bird quite low as a significantly larger bird much higher up (also it was foggy, which might have helped). So, when I saw the black head from below, tern was what came to mind (the hidden brown cap never coming into my mind as a possibility). And when on the screen I saw that the bill was too short for tern, I came up with Skua because conveniently it was on the facing page to Whiskered Tern in my 'Birds of Hokkaido' book. Also I had been hoping to go on a pelagic day trip from very near where this photo was taken, and Skua was one of the birds I had hoped to see, so again it was in my mind.