Little Stint Calidris minuta 小濱鷸
Category I. Scarce passage migrant in spring, rare in autumn and winter; occurs on Deep Bay intertidal mudflats and adjacent roost areas.
IDENTIFICATION
Apr. 2012, Martin Hale. Breeding plumage.
12-14 cm. Compared to Red-necked Stint has longer and thinner legs, more rounded body, smaller head, longer more finely-tipped bill, more upright posture, slightly greater height and more rapid foraging action. In non-breeding plumage, these non-plumage features are critical.
Adult breeding plumage has warm brown fringes to tertials, pure white chin, throat and central chest, a rusty tone to the rufous colouration and extensive orange-brown in the wing coverts.
Sep. 2022, Sarawak, Malaysia. Dave Bakewell. Juvenile.
In fresh plumage and compared to Red-necked Stint, juveniles have narrow white lines at the side of the mantle feathers, darker more contrasting centres to the wing coverts and scapulars, dark mottling at side of breast contrasting with a pale central area, a whiter supercilium, darker central crown and a generally more contrasting appearance.
VOCALISATIONS
Rarely heard among the large number of other shorebirds, but a short, high-pitched note uttered singly or in series has been heard.
DISTRIBUTION & HABITAT PREFERENCE
Most birds have been seen at roost on Mai Po NR or foraging on the intertidal mudflats of Deep Bay. There are three records from commercial fish ponds at San Tin and one from the freshwater wetlands at Long Valley.
OCCURRENCE
The first record occurred on 26 April 1986 (Kennerley 1987), since when it has occurred annually in very small numbers on spring passage, and occasionally at other times of the year. Peak passage occurs in the second half of April (Figure 1). Extreme dates are 20 March and 8 June in spring and 5 August and 29 October in autumn, though there are fewer than 10 records in the latter season. There is one winter record, which occurred on 13 December 2008. The highest count is of six birds during 13-17 April 1990 and on 24 April 2003 and 25 April 2004.
BEHAVIOUR, FORAGING & DIET
Like Red-necked Stint with which it usually associates, it prefers to forage in intertidal mudflats, pecking at the surface of the mud or probing just below.
RANGE & SYSTEMATICS
Monotypic. Breeds north of the Arctic Circle from northern Scandinavia east to New Siberian Islands, winters mainly in Africa but also coastally east as far as southeast Asia (Van Gils et al. 2020). In China a rare passage migrant through much of the country (Liu and Chen 2020).
CONSERVATION STATUS
IUCN: Least Concern. Population trend increasing.
Figure 1.
Kennerley, P. R. (1987). Little Stint Calidris minuta at Tsim Bei Tsui: a new species for Hong Kong. Hong Kong Bird Report 1986: 69-71.
Van Gils, J., P. Wiersma, and P. F. D. Boesman (2020). Little Stint (Calidris minuta), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.litsti.01
Liu, Y. and Y. H. Chen (eds) (2020). The CNG Field Guide to the Birds of China (in Chinese). Hunan Science and Technology Publication House, Changsha.
