08/12/2018 White-rumped Sandpiper at RSPB Pulborough Brooks A Lifer!

Saturday 8 December 2018
RSPB Pulborough Brooks
West Sussex


When local patch birder Matt@mostlyscarce posted a sighting of a White-rumped Sandpiper at RSPB Pulborough Brooks I jumped at the chance to see this "lifer". 

courtesy of Matt@mostlyscarce and twitter

 

This was  my first twitch since returning from Scotland.  The bird was first seen mid-morning but, as I had a few commitments to attend to,  I couldn't get there till mid afternoon by which time the weather had turned very wet indeed.

• The bird had disappeared about 10 minutes before I arrived so I spent almost an hour looking for it. 
• I heard some excited chatter a few yards away from me round the corner in Winpenny Hide and when I looked Alastair was there and had just seen the bird.   Soon we were all looking at it, albeit at a distance and in very poor light. 
• To confirm our ID we wanted to see the bird fly and before long it duly obliged, showing the tell tale white rump.  Job done! 

Well done Matt for a super find and thanks yet again Alastair for re-finding the bird. 

 

 Breeding in the Canadian Arctic, White-rumped winters in southern South America. Much more frequent here than Baird's (over twice the number of records), which can be explained by its migration strategy. The majority of southbound migrants head out over the Atlantic Ocean to staging areas in northeast South America, making them very susceptible to the same Atlantic depressions which bring other Nearctic vagrants to our shores - but there are more of them to become displaced!