Spring migration at San Tin

San Tin is a maze of fishponds, rather like an anarchic version of the nearby Mai Po Nature Reserve. In spring the ponds attract marsh terns, and today a flock of Whiskered Terns was busy fishing.
The fish farmers have apparently been persuaded to leave at least one pond half-drained of water to serve as a feeding site for passing shorebirds. In particular all four species of stint pass through in spring. Today saw a flock of Red-necked Stints, the most numerous of these species on the East Asian-Australasian Flyway; a few Long-toed Stints, which indeed have unusually long toes when one gets close enough to see them; and one or two Little Stints. The diminutive stints do not form a genus of their own, and one of their larger relatives, the Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, is extremely similar in plumage to the Long-toed Stint. A reliable way to distinguish the two is to compare the size to "control" birds such as the resident Wood Sandpipers, which are about the size of the Sharp-tailed and much larger than the Long-toed Stint. As for the Little and Red-necked Stints, they can be difficult to distinguish unless the latter is in red-necked breeding plumage. By catching the two side by side one can spot subtle differences such as the longer legs (black in both species) and longer, more finely pointed bill of the Little Stint.
Other passage migrants present recently have included Curlew Sandpipers, Kentish and Pacific Golden Plovers, Oriental Pratincoles and Eastern Yellow Wagtails.

Posted on April 22, 2023 11:38 AM by stephenmatthews