[All photographs copyright, Gary Nunn 2012] – It has been pretty quiet lately in San Diego County on the shorebird scene, so it was a nice surprise to hear that Dave Povey had discovered a Pectoral Sandpiper Calidris melanotos on 07 Sep 2012 feeding along the edge of the San Diego River flood control channel at Robb Field, Ocean Beach. I was in the neighborhood and went right over there to find the bird was quite close, feeding on the algae mats, allowing some detailed photography.

The close views allowed careful examination of the rich rufous fringed plumage of the upperparts of this juvenile. It also has some buffy wash to the breast sides. The bird let out a couple of characteristic “trreeett” calls as it made a few short agile flights when the main group of Least and Western Sandpipers flushed.

Distinguished from the much rarer Sharp-tailed Sandpiper by its neatly defined complete breast and neck streaking, less capped appearance of the head, and a marginally longer bill. A nice bird to see close up!

This location, accessed from Robb Field in Ocean Beach, is a good shorebird spot with some excellent previous recorded species including Bar-tailed Godwit and Baird’s Sandpiper. Some disturbance occurs from fishermen collecting bait from the mudflats here, but birds seem to tolerate this presence and some species, for example Snowy Egrets and Marbled Godwits, even follow the fishermen around picking over the muddy excavations.

Many thanks to Dave Povey for getting the news out quickly because this species can disappear in a second, as I witnessed in 2011 in South San Diego Bay. Detected in flight by its call, an individual touched down on the mudlflat right in front of me, I spun my ‘scope around and it had gone!