PICTURE 64: More clues to the above bird: "droplets" on primary covert tips (red "V"), fresh, grey-edged carpal covert and carpal remicle, white reaching the shaft of at least pps. 3 and 4 (red vertical bars). And last but not least: a few remaining feathers from the adult belly-patch! Many thanks to Chung-Yu Chiang for these pictures; everyone seeing them applauds the fact that he "got it all"! The left part of the pic slightly darkened in order to increase the contrast between white and black. [CP]
I can see that this particular document is being increasingly viewed by Asian
and American Dunlin workers; i am the target of a slow downfall of field pics from all over the northern hemisphere. The sad thing is that i can use so little of that material, because nothing is known about the provenance of the enigmatic birds shown. At this stage - after having presented some basic material - i prefer Dunlin pics from the breeding areas, or birds from migration and wintering with some likely subspecific designation.
There still are field "problems", where some expanded knowledge might be helpful. For example: all Asian and Nearctic Dunlin populations seem to experience better conditions for moult than European populations; there is time and food for moult already on breeding-grounds. Maybe there are fewer compromises in the overall schedule as a consequence, so that e.g. juveniles moult more completely?
Brennan et al. 1984 were leaning on and referring to
Prater, Marchant and Vuorinen 1977 when ageing juveniles of the subspecies
pacifica, apparently prepared to adopt the European moult pattern(s) for Nearctic birds - but their description of the method wasn't confidence-inspiring: they quoted "inner tertials" (these may be quite worn after New Year) while the text in Prater et al. mentions "inner medians".
It would be very interesting to see relevant (focused on relevant parts) pictures of inner primaries, medians, primary coverts and juvenile feathers in general from the subspecies sakhalina, kistchinski, actites, arcticola, pacifica, hudsonia and arctica!
And the faces of sexes! If i get such material, i will either comment on a picture myself, or publish picture + comment (+ copyright note, if this is desired) - and comment on the comment where this is called for. All will be done in cooperation with each contributor.
A third example: from the original paper by
Gromadzka 1989 it's e.g. evident that
sakhalina has "adult buff" coverts at some stage of the annual cycle. How about the Nearctic populations, in particular those migrating SW, by way of Japan, Korea and China (
link 1,
link 2)? Even if adult buffs are worn away in these areas already in autumn, they pop up anew with the growth of tertials in prenuptial moult, causing
some confusion.
There is another theme of subspecific determination,
the white on inner primaries, i learnt my basics here, including the ranking-scale, from Wlodek Meissner. Pavel Tomkovich once told me that Japanese workers ranked
sakhalina when studying them on breeding-grounds in Siberia. This approach is not going to be of any use if there is no
cline (groups of birds with different average rankings) in the material. So, what were the Japanese results, which primaries did they study? And what is the pattern of Nearctic populations on inner primaries?
Arcticola has white to the shafts of inner primaries, as could be expected, but how about the rest of the Nearctic subspecies?
Next follows the general problem of subspecific determination based on other plumage characters in
HUDSONIA-PACIFICA-ARCTICOLA
. The web offers a lot of semi-instructive pictures, e.g. Angus Wilson's
2c hudsonia from New York, winter, Jean Iron's of a
hudsonia in breeding plumage from Lake Erie, Canada 8.5.2006 (bright-faced, white-tipped back feathers). And best of all: a picture by
Mario Lavoie from Ste-Pétronille, St Lawrence, Quebec 27.5.05. But one could wish for ten times as much, it would be very helpful! (Added here a site showing the
distribution of
hudsonia.)
From British Columbia Mike Yip's offers a
pacifica, 20.4.2004; chestnut, black, white on back feathers, almost fish-scale structure (like in a Knot), in addition i have found two pictures from
US Fish and Wildlife Service, i guess they show an
arcticola. The best
arcticola picture available is in a poster by
Robert Gill and Rick Lanctot, describing the fieldwork at Barrow, Alaska in 2005; very whitish face in a male, fine streaks on breast (warning: this is a slow server).
Next
ACTITES-SAKHALINA: Pictures of the "Sakhalin dunlin"
Calidris alpina actites can be seen in
Assessment of the impact of fauna of the pipeline connected with the "Sakhalin-2" project. These pictures are of poor quality and allow no morphological conclusions, but the habitat descriptions are of great interest. Three good
Japanese pictures on
Stint Fan from 14.5.06 could show "sakhalina" in breeding plumage, two other
Japanese pictures from May are also on this site; cf. mantle feathers of pictures 16 and 18 above, also note absence of cap and light breast-streaking. A light-faced, but alas rather unsharp
sakhalina can be seen in
Ruud & Kitty Kampf's homepage, a better
sakhalina picture from breeding grounds at Anadyr, Chukchi Peninsula 11.7.06 is offered by Augusto Faustino on
Oriental Bird Images (a nearly ten-day-old juvenile was obviously ringed the same day, hatching only a few days earlier than Dunlin breeding >800 m a.s.l. in N. Lappland, Sweden).
And finally:
SCHINZII-ARCTICA: From Palaearctic areas we have Dick Newell's alas rather unsharp pictures of a
Svalbard bird in breeding plumage; 12.7.2002, it is white-edged on back feathers, and short-billed - but gender may be involved. His pictures on
magikbirds.com are better; they show
arctica birds from Longyearbyen, 12.7.02, referring to "Birds of the Western Palearctic" to confirm the subspecies determination. From
Alftaness, Iceland three pictures by Gudmundur Geir (note the instructive young bird), four other
Iceland pictures are by Jakob Sigurdsson; note heavy streaks (dots, blotches) on breast and yellowish mantle fringes in
schinzii birds - but there is some variation, and i'm not sure that all pictures show
schinzii. Finally a probable
schinzii from Ireland, a bird in summer plumage 2.8.05, by
John N. Murphy. A possible
arctica from
Caithness 26.5.06 belongs here, note very light edges to back feathers, small belly patch. A
second picture from the same locality, 11.5.06, four specimens, and i assume all four are considered to belong to the Greenland subspecies. There is some breast-streaking (as much as in one of Sigurdsson's Icelandic pictures) and some belly-patch, but the pixel content of the pictures is low, magnification doesn't add more detail.
Schinzii breeds in the Caithness area, too.
I could add a sort of concluding warning: in general i can see that most of the breeding-area pictures (from all over the world) show birds standing on their toes, stretching whitish necks, watching intently, even trilling. They depict
males disturbed in their territories, the Dunlin female remains an incognito being.
I feel pretty safe about my webmail address
cpsweden@gmail.com, Google can handle spam, so use that address in communication! [CP]
To "Studies of migrating Dunlin
Calidris alpina
in the Sound area, S. Sweden: Introduction"
To "Phenology and biometry of Dunlin
Calidris alpina
migrating by way of the Sound area, S. Sweden"
To "Migrating Dunlin
Calidris alpina
in the Baltic area: the moult issue"
To "Risk-prone or risk-averse? Dunlin
Calidris alpina
migrating with and without moult-gaps in the Baltic area"
To "Wintering and spring staging Dunlin
Calidris alpina
in the south Baltic area"
To "Migratory progress of juvenile and adult Dunlin
Calidris alpina
from two perspectives: the Baltic and the Waddensea"
To "Bill-length distributions in Dunlin
Calidris alpina
"
To the bill account
To the Meissner scale
To Dunlin references A - J
To Dunlin references K - Z
To wader literature list A - L
To the Dunlin literature list M - Z
Back to start page
First published 24.7.06, link added 30.1.07, last text change 11.1.14, all links will be checked and corrected in February 2014.