It's been a great July, rounded off nicely by a summer plumage long-billed dowitcher at Burton Mere Wetlands, my third on the reserve and about my 14th overall. There were two togther at BMW when it was still Inner Marsh Farm back in 2009.
Even though I have no reason to doubt that this is a long-billed dowitcher, I
always like to try to confirm it for myself if I can. I'm no expert, but as
I understand it the patterning on the underwing helps split summer plumage
long-billed from short-billed dowitcher. On the photo above, the black
marks on the axillary feathers are quite a bit narrower than the white which
points to long-billed, whereas on short-billed the black and the white would
be of similar thickness. Also the patterning on the lesser coverts is more
like long-billed forming two distinct lines unlike short-billed where they
would be more densely patterned and not forming such obviously parallel
lines.
On long-billed dowitcher the orange extends onto the belly whereas on
short-billed the belly is white. I have however seen photos of summer
plumaged short-billed dowitcher which appear to show orange bellies so this
doesn't look a particularly reliable feature to me.
Of course long-billed is by far the commonest of the two species, in fact
I've only ever seen one short-billed anywhere and that was in
Ireland in 2019, so if you find a dowitcher call it long-billed and you'll most likely be
correct.
Long-billed dowitcher proving once again that it's absolutely nothing like a
godwit. Dowitchers are more like snipe.
You can see in this photo and the others at the top of the post, it's much closer to redshank in size than
godwit.
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