This evening I was puzzling over a shorebird (more on the shorebird later – I've got dozen's of posts I could write these days), which flashed a white rump when it flushed. The trouble was the photos I took of it all said "Baird's Sandpiper" to me. So I wanted to go back to look at a photo of a White-rumped Sandpiper from a few days ago to check.
I was doing that just now, looking at a photo of a White-rumped and a Baird's that were flying from me, when I noticed something strange about the Baird's. When I first looked at the photo the Baird's seemed noticeably larger but I put that down to it being perhaps closer to the camera. But this time I noticed something else. The bird I thought was a Baird's had yellow legs, and Baird's have black legs.
This bird is a Pectoral Sandpiper, a bird that I knew was a possible from a survey back in 1976 (Renaud et al) but that I hadn't seen (that I noticed) until now. I had taken a few photos, but most were out of focus, as I was concentrating on the White-rumped it was feeding with.
Here's the best one I have…