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Temminck's Stint | Calidris temminckii
Temmincks strandloper | Correlimos de Temminck
Temminck's Stint is one of the smallest waders, a plain grey-brown, rather elongated little bird with short, pale legs. It breeds from Scandinavia to eastern Siberia and winters mainly in the Sahel, East Africa and southern Asia; in southern Africa it is a rare vagrant to fresh inland waters.
Voice
A characteristic high, dry trill, tirrrr or trrrrit, often repeated on take-off, when the bird towers away steeply and jerkily.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–15 cm. Plain grey-brown above, without clear pale lines on the back; the breast is plain grey-brown and forms a complete breast band, sharply demarcated from the white belly, giving it a Common Sandpiper-like look. The head is fairly plain with an indistinct pale eye-ring. The bill is short, thin and dark, slightly drooping at the tip. The legs are yellowish-green to dull yellow, an important difference from Little Stint. The tail projects slightly beyond the wingtips and has white outer tail feathers, well seen on take-off. The posture is compact and horizontal; it walks slowly, almost creeping over the ground.
Confusion species
Little Stint Calidris minuta has black legs, a whiter breast with streaking only at the sides, a pale V on the back and grey outer tail feathers. Common Sandpiper Actitis hypoleucos is much larger, with a longer bill, a white hook in front of the bend of the wing and a bobbing gait. Baird's Sandpiper Calidris bairdii, also a vagrant, is larger and more elongated, with black legs and long wings reaching well beyond the tail.
Habitat
Muddy and grassy margins of small, sheltered fresh waters: riverbanks, dams, sewage ponds and flooded grassland with vegetation, rarely on the coast. It often keeps to the inside of fringing vegetation and occurs singly or in small groups, less on open mud than Little Stint.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
A rare vagrant in the region with scattered records, mainly in the north (Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe) and exceptionally further south into South Africa. Beyond the region it winters in the Sahel, in East Africa south to Tanzania, around the Mediterranean and in southern and South-East Asia.
How and when to look
Walk slowly along the vegetated margins of sewage ponds and dams and look for a small grey-brown bird with pale legs crouching among the plants. On take-off the dry trill gives it away, together with the white outer tail feathers.
Conservation status
Not threatened; the world population is large and more or less stable. The species is so rare in southern Africa that regional conservation is not an issue.
Scientific name
Calidris temminckii | (Leisler, 1812)
Leisler described the species in 1812 as Tringa Temminckii; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Calidris was introduced in 1804 by Merrem. Calidris goes back to Ancient Greek kalidris or skalidris, a name Aristotle used for an unidentified grey waterside bird. temminckii honours the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck (1778–1858), first director of the national natural history museum in Leiden. The specimen the first description was based on came from Hanau, Germany.