Pectoral sandpiper

Voice

A low, hard, reedy krrrt or trrrp, often repeated two or three times as the bird flushes; heavier and drier than anything else in a wader flock and never to be confused with the thin squeak of White-rumped Sandpiper. Displaying males on the tundra deliver a hollow booming oomp-oomp-oomp from an inflated breast sac, a sound Europe does not get to hear.

Identification

Clearly larger than Dunlin, with a longer neck, small head and a fairly long, slightly decurved bill with a pale yellowish-brown base. The legs are olive to dull yellow. The mark is the breast: densely brown-streaked, darkest at the sides, and cut off sharply and squarely across the full width against clean white underparts. The upperparts are dark with rufous and white feather fringes and bright pale mantle lines. Males are markedly larger than females, which can mislead on size alone. In flight the wing bar is weak, the rump dark-centred with white sides.

Confusion species

The bird that really matters is Sharp-tailed Sandpiper. On Pectoral the breast streaking ends abruptly and horizontally against white; on Sharp-tailed the markings fade out and run down the flanks as arrowheads and chevrons. Sharp-tailed also has a warm rufous crown standing out against a broad white supercilium and a conspicuous white eye-ring, whereas Pectoral's crown is grey-brown and finely streaked and the supercilium shorter and duller. Juvenile Sharp-tailed shows a plain orange-buff breast streaked only at the sides; juvenile Pectoral keeps the complete streaked bib. Bill and legs separate them poorly, since both have a pale bill base and yellow to olive legs, though Sharp-tailed's bill is shorter, straighter and blunter. Against Baird's and White-rumped Sandpiper, Pectoral is larger and taller, has yellow rather than black legs and lacks the long primary projection beyond the tail. A small female Pectoral can approach Dunlin in size, so check leg colour and the cut-off bib. A large male suggests a small Ruff, but Ruff has a smaller head on a longer neck, scaled upperparts without mantle lines, and two oval white flashes either side of the tail in flight.

Habitat

Emphatically not open tidal flats. Look on wet grassland and flooded field corners, along the vegetated edges of coastal scrapes and pools, on drawn-down reservoir shorelines and in sewage-works settling beds. Birds feed half concealed among short vegetation and walk with an upright, deliberate gait, often with Snipe and Ruff rather than with Dunlin. It breeds on wet coastal tundra in north-east Siberia and North America.

Range and movements

Breeding runs from Taimyr eastwards across Siberia and Arctic North America, with wintering in South America and, for part of the Siberian population, in Australasia. Britain and Ireland record it annually, typically some tens of birds a year, most numerous in September and most reliably on the western seaboard and the Northern Isles, and spring adults occur in May. The Netherlands passed ninety-six accepted records before assessment ceased in 1999, and Spain had recorded one hundred and sixty by 2004.

Where and when to look

September, after a prolonged run of Atlantic westerlies, on the landward edge of coastal scrapes and on flooded grassland. Work the line where grass meets mud, not the open shore. Once a yellow-legged, sharply bibbed Calidris is in the scope, go straight to the crown and the flanks, because those are the only characters that eliminate Sharp-tailed Sandpiper.

Conservation status

Assessed as Least Concern with a very large world population, but Alaskan breeding counts and South American winter surveys both point to a decline. Loss of wet grassland and shallow freshwater marsh along the mid-continental flyway weighs heavily, as does the conversion of pampas grassland to arable in Argentina and Uruguay. In Europe the species is far too scarce to be a management concern in its own right.