In the late summer and autumn, our coastline provides a vital pit-stop for birds heading further south from more northern breeding areas, giving us a chance to spot birds we won’t see year-round.
Two of these temporary visitors are curlew sandpipers and common sandpipers: both are wading birds which look quite similar to dunlins.
Curlew sandpipers breed in the high Arctic region in northern Siberia with a few individuals migrating through the UK to their winter sun destinations in western Africa. We see them en route from July through to October.
Curlew sandpipers are very similar to dunlins and so they’re a challenging species to accurately identify. They’re a little more elegant and elongated in their proportions, without the belly streaks and smudges you might see on a dunlin.
They have long, downward curved bills and plain white rumps which, as you can see in the photo, are particularly noticeable in flight and provide a useful way for telling them apart from dunlins.
These passage migrants make the most of the feast they find in our Solent mud to build up their strength to continue their extraordinary migratory journeys.
Common sandpipers, like curlew sandpipers, are a temporary presence, arriving late summer as they migrate through to their more southerly end points in Africa.
Their breeding season ends in July, so it makes sense that we’re seeing them now en route after the fuss of fledging chicks is over.
They can also be tricky to ID alongside similar looking wading birds, such as dunlins.
Notice the characteristic stiff, flickering beats of its bowed wings in the video clip below.
Juvenile birds in the autumn have dark-tipped bills, shorter than a dunlin’s, and are more of a mid-brown above, compared with dunlins’ streakier lighter plumage. Their tails are a little longer than a dunlin’s, their greenish legs a little shorter, and they have a more marked white crescent in front of their closed wings.
In this country common sandpipers breed in Wales, northern England, and much of Scotland and western Ireland. A very small number spend the winter on our coastlines rather than heading further south.
Curlew sandpiper filmed by Ranger Tony at Lymington Keyhaven Nature Reserve
Common sandpiper filmed by Ranger Tony at Lymington Keyhave Nature Reserve
