Natural Selection

As I’ve mentioned in these blogs the go to location for birding near the hotel (the Riu Palace, but the Riu Karamboa is closer still) is Rabil lagoon. It’s a location I’ve heard of over the years which has always sounded exotic to me. It had delivered to a decent extent over the holiday, with five or six Lesser Yellowlegs and a Ring-necked Duck. The best was saved until last.

This was what I saw in a morning walk on Thursday last.

the Curlew Sandpiper

The Curlew Sandpiper was the first of the week here so the highlight, but note the Whimbrel. I’ve seen a few Whimbrel by the lagoon and on the beach this week, they’ve all been Eurasian Whimbrels with the white v-shape on the rump and this was also.

Late afternoon Jane had a college seminar so I stayed out of the way and returned to the lagoon. I wasn’t expecting much and left the camera behind (a bit of a schoolboy error). When I got to the expanse there were seven Black-winged Stilts as well as the Whimbrel, which were clearly new.

Something flushed the stilts, taking the Whimbrel with them into the air. My subconscious must have picked up on something that hadn’t really registered consciously as I thought I hadn’t seen a white rump. Raising my binoculars it was clear that this was right, and I was looking at an American ‘Hudsonian’ Whimbrel.

Documenting this was tricky when I didn’t have a camera, and the only cast iron feature could only be seen when the bird flew. In the end I did get a couple of videos which show that the bird was indeed uniformly coloured on the upperparts. Through my binoculars the strong head pattern could clearly be seen. Ironically given I don’t think it counts for much the call was better recorded than the appearance though. You can see some stills and the recording of the call here:

https://ebird.org/checklist/S280838843

Without getting too ‘bird nerd’ about this thoughts on whether Hudsonian Whimbrel and Eurasian Whimbrel should be one or two species have yo-yoed. As it happens they’re currently yo-yoing back to them being two species as this note on e Bird explains.

I didn’t see any Whimbrel in the few days I spent in America. I did see one of the handful of birds in Britain, the individual at Walney, Cumbria in 2007. It’s not a species (or sub-species if you prefer) I ever expected to find in the Western Palearctic so it was fantastic to do so.