October 19, 2008
Jack Snipe? in Astoria
There is a pasture just out of Astoria on highway 202 that occasionally fills up with water, either from the rains or high tides and sometimes it attracts a few shorebird. It's always been a spot worth checking in the fall, but a blown out tidegate has made it even more interesting this season. On Saturday, I stopped to check for Pectoral Sandpipers in the hopes of maybe also finding a Sharp-tailed and found, instead, a field full of Wilson's Snipe, no fewer than 200. That's a lot of snipe for one spot and a phenomenon peculiar to fall migration.
While scoping through the flock, I noticed a remarkably small individual with a shorter than expected bill. I first thought I might be looking at a Pectoral Sandpiper from a bad angle, but a good look at the face pattern quickly brought me back to snipe.
Well, excluding aberrants, the only snipe noticeably smaller than a Wilson's is Jack Snipe. Jack Snipe is a very rare Eurasian vagrant and the only Oregon records have come from hunters.
The bird I saw was smaller and shorter billed. It also disappeared behind the clumps of sedge. So, I saw the head, I saw the back and not much else of the bird.
I have preached "Be prepared" for years. Always carry a notebook. But I found myself without notebook and without cell phone. My house was a 5 minute drive away, so I figured I could get away with a quick trip back home. At home I made a quick report, grabbed by cell phone, notebook and a shorebird field guide and was back at the site within 20 minutes. All the snipe appeared to be just where I'd left them. I got set up. Maybe, if I stared at the spot where the little snipe had gone...
...and the big, noisy truck drove by...
That's was probably it. Any details were going to have to come from memory. At this point, I figured I'd better write some stuff down. I made a couple of quick sketches in my notebook, closed my eyes, pulled up the memory of what I saw and committed it to paper: the comparatively rounder head, the shorter looking bill, the patterns of the face (side view), the appearance of the crown (front view).
The sketch I'm showing you is a cleaned up second sketch on better paper minus all the smudging and erasures, but it's essentially the same details you'd see in the notebook version.
You'll notice the two views don't quite match. There's an extra line between the eye and the crown in the side view. I have a rule, which is sometimes really tempting to break. The image in my head has to be what goes in details. No embellishments, no correcting after the fact, even in the drawing of the drawing.
I went back out figuring that I needed a look at the scapulars and tail in order to clinch the ID of this bird. It was not until I got home and started going through field guides and internet photos that I discovered the importance of no crown stripe. What I remembered from the side view was typical snipe-ish details approximately common to both species. But a Jack Snipe has no crown stripe and that's the memory detail that comes out in the front view.
Did I see a Jack Snipe? I don't really know what else to make of it. It would be life bird and my 400th species in Oregon, if it is. Other who've assessed the details I've presented seem to agree that's what it most likely was, but we've failed to relocate it in subsequent efforts. I kind of think I'd like to get another look at it before I count it or at least have someone else see it and be able to back me up.
Posted by mbalame at October 19, 2008 5:46 PM