Possible Siberian Oystercatcher on Scilly in October 2017
My annual October pilgrimage to Scilly was ticking along nicely. There had been a good selection of birds on the islands since my arrival on 6th – arrival timed as one hour after the Cliff Swallow departed! Oh well!
I had managed to photograph a good selection of the birds on offer. Staying at Mount Flagon I always treat Porthloo as my local patch on the island and often spend time around the beach photographing the birds that are on show there. However, it had got to the Wednesday of my second week on the islands and I realised I had not spent any time down at Porthloo. So, with a good weather forecast and a report of a Black Redstart in the “usual spot” I decided to have a morning on the beach.
I made my way to the north end of the beach, by the last bench and set up my camera to focus on the yellow lichen covered boulders at that end of the beach. On cue out popped the Black Redstart and performed brilliantly. Its nice when birds perform well!
The morning ticked along nicely and various bird watchers came and went – many asking what I was looking for. Late morning, I re-positioned myself a bit lower on the path down to the beach (to get a better perspective for pictures – and as it happens a bit closer to the boulders). The birds performed well. I obtained pics of the Black Redstart, a couple of showy Stonechats, Meadow Pipit, Rock Pipit, Wren and Greenfinch. Nothing rare but the weather was good and I was enjoying myself.
After lunch (which I had in situ) I noticed the tide was coming in nicely and I paid a bit of attention to the foreshore to see if the six Ringed Plover that were on the beach were being pushed any closer to me. Unfortunately, I got on to them just as they decided to fly off to roost on Taylor’s Island. A further scan to see what else was there located a single Greenshank and a group of Oystercatchers that were being unusually quiet as they fed.
As I scanned through the Oystercatchers to see if there were any other waders with them my attention was quickly focused onto an Oystercatcher with an obvious brown back – not faded black but brown. “What the heck” or something to that effect I muttered to myself and I immediately recalled seeing the Siberian Oystercatcher pics being claimed from Shetland.
Courtesy of the fantastic communications now on Scilly I was able to use 4G on the beach to look up those pics of the Shetland bird. “WOW that looks just like my bird – and dare I say it my bird looks even better than the Shetland bird”. I also had a look at a few other articles including a short piece by Martin Garner. Everything I was reading seemed to fit my bird on Porthloo beach. What I did see consistently was a reference to the nasal groove being more than half the bill length whereas on Eurasian it is no more than half and often shorter. Other pointers were sometimes a feel of a longer bill, more white in the primaries in flight and longer legs.
I proceeded to try to photograph these points on my bird. As I was interrogating one of my pics on the back of the camera I was joined by Tony Collinson who was travelling light with just his 400mm lens. I asked him what he knew about longipes Oystercatcher and pointed out the bird to him. Interestingly his first comment, save for the recognition of the brown back, was that he assessed that it had a longer bill than the Eurasian. This was unprompted.
After a bit more of a discussion I phoned it in to RBA as I could not see, based on the documentary evidence I was reading, why it was not a Siberian Oystercatcher. The news was promptly put out as a possible Siberian Oystercatcher.
I must say the mad rush to see the bird did not develop into anything more than a steady trickle of viewers showing interest in the bird and most querying what the distinguishing features are to look for to prove its identity. These visitors included fellow photographers Gary, Andy and Simon and they remarked that this bird had been around for a few days. I was not aware of this and no-one had seemingly put their head above the parapet and put a name to it or even remarked that there was a strange Oystercatcher at Porthloo.
I hope my pics do this bird justice because the brown back was just so obvious in the field. Some on Twitter asked why it was not normal bleaching of feathers but the brown was so uniform and much more obvious than on the Eurasians nearby (some of which showed a hint of bleaching in some feathers). Also, the brown back was clearly demarcated from a black head and neck. If it was bleaching then how had it managed to protect the head and neck feathers so well?
I believe from my pics that the nasal grove is more than half the length of the bill and the flight shot shows slightly more uniform white on the primaries compared to the Eurasian in the same pic.
An interesting bird and together with the Shetland bird I hope the pics and further study are enough to identify it for certain one way or another…
Richard Stonier
27 October 2017
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