Figure 225. Presumably reflecting the difficulty of identifying first-year birds, each of California’s nine Red-necked Stints has been in alternate plumage. Eight of the nine records coincide with the return of southbound adult shorebirds in late June and July (see also Appendix H). Typical was this bird, photographed in early July 1994 at the mouth of the Santa Clara River, Ventura County (1994-103; Brian E. Small).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RED-NECKED STINT Calidris ruficollis (Pallas, 1776)

Accepted: 9 (35%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 17	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 2	Large color images: see Figure and H-18

This stint breeds in Siberia and, rarely, in northern and western Alaska. The species winters from Southeast Asia south to Australia and New Zealand. Small numbers regularly migrate through the islands of the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands, and the species is “almost annual” in British Columbia (NAB 59:642), where three spring vagrants have been recorded (NAB 59:482). The first to be documented in Washington was a bird in alternate plumage present 28 July–2 August 2005 (NAB 59:646, 691). The Oregon Bird Records Committee has accepted records of seven birds in alternate plumage between 20 June and 26 August, including four from 1982 alone, and is reviewing three records from later in the fall season, two of them first-fall birds on the state’s southern coast: 19 September 2004 at Siltcoos Beach and 5 October 2006 at the south jetty of the Siuslaw River. Numerous other New World records come from the Atlantic coast between Maine and Virginia, with additional occurrences in Tennessee, Missouri, Ohio, western Texas (Lockwood and Freeman 2004), Nevada, Alberta, Hawaii, and Peru. Escott (1995) reviewed this species’ patterns of vagrancy in the New World.

California’s first Red-necked Stint, an alternate-plumaged bird found on 5 May 1969 in Eureka, Humboldt County, probably was heading north after wintering in the New World. The state’s second, discovered on 18 June 1974 in Crescent City, Del Norte County, was probably an early fall vagrant. The seven ensuing records have involved autumnal vagrants between 28 June and 29 July; see also Appendix H. All accepted California records involve birds in alternate plumage, a circumstance that presumably reflects the difficulty of identifying Red-necked Stints in less conspicuous plumages. As noted for the Lesser Sand-Plover, vagrants have (twice) appeared at the same locale in successive falls.

On 17 August 1974, a second-year stint in heavily worn first alternate plumage was collected at Red Hill at the Salton Sea, Imperial County (McCaskie 1975c). The longest primaries are missing on one wing and heavily worn on the other. This militates against use of the known diagnostic morphometrics, which involve wing length (see Prater et al. 1977). Veit (1988) compared the tarsus length and various bill measurements to six specimens each of Red-necked and Little Stints and reached “a firm conclusion” that the bird is a Red-necked Stint. But later comparison of the bird to more than 100 specimens of these species—work conducted by M. Ralph Browning and the late Claudia Wilds at the National Museum of Natural History—proved inconclusive (Erickson and Hamilton 2001). Although bare-part measurements are closer to those of a Red-necked Stint, the pattern on the vestigial outermost primary (see Hayman et al. 1986) suggests a Little Stint (Patten et al. 2003). The CBRC remains hopeful that the specimen will eventually be identified conclusively.

A first-fall Calidris sandpiper present 1–6 September 1979 in Ventura County (Figure 227) was judged at the time to be a Red-necked Stint (AB 33:214, Roberson 1980:160) until careful analysis showed it to have been a brightly colored Semipalmated Sandpiper. To review the pitfalls of field identification among smaller members of the genus Calidris, see Jonsson and Grant (1984), Beaman and Madge (1988), Alström and Olsson (1989), and Wilson (2005).