Temminck's stint

Voice

The flight call is a dry, high, rapidly repeated trill, tirrrrr or tirr-tirr-tirr, like a small rattle, and utterly unlike the short tit of Little Stint. It almost always calls on take-off, which rescues the identification of a departing bird. On the breeding grounds the male performs a song-flight, a long silvery trill delivered while hanging over the marsh edge on raised wings, often at dusk. In the Netherlands and Spain only the flight call is heard.

Identification

Small and elongated, with a horizontal, almost creeping posture and short legs that are yellow-olive to dirty yellow: that leg colour is the quickest feature. The breast is evenly grey-brown and ends sharply against the white belly, without the split supercilium or white mantle lines of Little Stint. Upperparts plain grey-brown; only in summer are a few black-centred, rusty-fringed scapulars mixed in. The bill is short, straight and dark, sometimes with a faintly pale base. On take-off the white outer tail feathers are the clincher, together with the narrow white wingbar and the high, jerky flight.

Confusion species

Little Stint is the first to rule out: black legs, white throat, obvious pale mantle lines and a more upright stance. Wood Sandpiper is considerably larger and longer-legged, with white-spangled upperparts and a white rump. Common Sandpiper shows a white wedge in front of the wing bend and bobs its rear end continually, which Temminck's does not. When in doubt at range, behaviour decides: Temminck's feeds by creeping patiently, Little Stint hurries.

Habitat

Fresh and slightly brackish vegetated margins: ditches and seepage channels, wet corners of meadows, settling lagoons, sewage works, clay pits and the muddy edges of inland pools. Unlike most small waders it avoids open bare mud and the tidal zone. It feeds slowly and deliberately among low vegetation, on midge larvae, small beetles and other insects. It breeds along tundra rivers, in willow scrub and on damp birch fringes.

Range and movements

Breeds in northern Scandinavia and right across arctic Siberia, with a small, much reduced population along the Gulf of Bothnia; winters in Africa, the Mediterranean and southern Asia. In the Netherlands it is a scarce but annual migrant, peaking in the first half of May with a second wave from July to early September, nearly always at inland or brackish sites and rarely on the Wadden flats. In Spain it is a scarce migrant, turning up mainly in the Ebro delta, the rice fields and at inland reservoirs and lagoons.

• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

The first half of May is by far the most productive. At sunrise walk slowly along the edge of a settling lagoon, a seepage ditch or a freshly drawn-down pool and watch for birds that flush only at a few metres; that trilling call is your cue to follow them to where they drop in again. They often return to the same few metres of bank, so it pays to stand still rather than to give chase. In autumn juveniles are commonest in August, usually singly or in twos and threes.

Conservation status

Least Concern; the world population sits almost entirely in Siberia and is large and stable. The European edge of the range fares worse: breeders along the Swedish and Finnish shores of the Gulf of Bothnia have declined sharply through the overgrowing of shore meadows and through predation, and the occupied area in Fennoscandia is shrinking. For migrants, the loss of small shallow freshwater marshes along the flyway is the main concern.