Blast From The Past Finds - Stilt Sandpiper

In 2003, I moved to Cork for a 6 month student placement at Lough Beg, on the west side of Cork Harbor.

I instantly fell in love with the county, and the estuary beside work wasn't too shabby a spot to have to hand, allowing me to see some good birds such as over summering Little Gulls, a Sabine's Gull, and finding 5 Roseate Terns roosting on the mud (they were considered quite the county rarity at the time, but it soon became apparent that this was a regular location for this species in late summer).

On the 6th of August I had my scope with me 😞 intending on doing some birding after work. 

The tide was low, which was perfect for roosting terns and gulls, as well as small waders.

Scanning through the numerous Sandwich Terns and Black-Headed Gulls produced several Mediterranean Gulls of various ages, which was typical. There were also quite a few fresh in Dunlin and Knot.

Continuing to pan left, my scope fell upon an unusual wader towards the far side of the mudflat, up to it's belly in a pool. 

It was shank structured, quite silvery above, with interspersed black feathering in the mantle and scapulars. The flanks were heavily barred. It had a distinct and waved supercilium, with rusty tones on the forehead and ear coverts and the bill was quite long and obviously decurved (when the head wasn't completely submerged, which it was most of the time).

Panic gripped my stomach suddenly. This looked like a summer Stilt Sandpiper!

I reached for my 50x lens and took a deep breath. It was a warm and sunny summer evening, which meant a bit of haze, especially on high mag, and the sun, though not yet behind the bird, was already out to my left and casting reflections off the pool it was in.

Could I be getting a bad view of an adult Lesser Yellowlegs, or worse, something more common really presenting itself badly?

I was about to try and phone some people to get some extra pair of eyes when the bird solved the problem for me. 

All on it's own, it decided to walk out of the pool it was in and stood on a nearby rock.

The legs on the thing!! The term stilt really is apt. It stood on this rock for several minutes whilst I just stared at it, awestruck. 

Stilt Sandpiper - Ciarán Smyth

I put the news out quickly, and within 20 minutes birders from all over Cork and even Kerry and Waterford began to appear (there had, after all, only been a few birds recorded in Ireland at that point, and not all had been gettable). 

The bird made it's way into Lough Beg reserve that evening as the tide rose, and then lingered a week, repeating this pattern of moving to and fro between the reserve and the outer estuary.

I got to enjoy it several times over the course of that week, as did many twitchers from around the country and even a few from the UK. 

It was also a good excuse for a few friends to visit from "up d'country" and a few celebratory pints had in my (then) local village of Douglas (KC's for life).

It remains one of my favorite finds ever. Though I have to say, I would love to find a juvenile of this species! Someday perhaps.

Stilt Sandpiper - in keeping with the trying to somewhat archive historical images theme mentioned in previous posts, I managed to screenshot this from old internet archives. We really have likely lost a lot of the digital photo record of the past unfortunately.

I know there were a lot more images of this bird out there, maybe even an old video or two.

If anyone has any, please let me know. Would be great to have them. 

There's just something great about images like this to me. Yeah, they're small, and they're low res and grainy as f*ck. 😂

But they're history and memory.