Curlew Sandpiper, Heislerville WMA (NJ) - 5/13/2007




Images and text copyright © Phil Jeffrey 2007

Having gone down the previous week and missed the prior Curlew Sandpiper amongst several thousand shorebirds, I had the opposite experience on Saturday evening when I stepped out of the car and Jay McGowan put me on the Curlew Sandpiper within 30 seconds. You could see the brick red glow amongst all the Semipalmated Plovers with the naked eye. It proved to be relatively tame and I took many photographs of which I show four here - two of them are flight shots to show the thin wing-bar and the barring extending up into the rump. The white rump is more prominent on basic and juvenile plumages but here the white rump was not particularly evident even in flight. This is an adult male in breeding plumage, but there apparently was also a female present.

Curlew Sandpiper adult male
Curlew Sandpiper adult male
Curlew Sandpiper adult male
Curlew Sandpiper adult male

Phil Jeffrey, May 2007