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Having been sufficiently troubled by anomalous features I observed on the 'Lesser Golden Plover' that I saw at Tacumshin on Tuesday evening with Victor Caschera, Gerard Murray and Gerry O'Sullivan, I returned late this afternoon to try and obtain better looks, and if possible record the call. With the assistance of Matti Maddock I located the bird on the north side of the lake, between The Forgotten Corner and Lingstown. I approached it slowly, with telescope, parobola microphone and camera, wishing that I had an extra arm..
The bird was a little more approachable than yesterday but it didn't tolerate my coming within about 100m of it. Quite quickly - too quickly I now realise - I concluded that it was, after all, just an odd-looking American, mainly on the basis that at times it looked too long-winged for a Pacific; also, while it is probably not a reliable indicator, it looked so much darker overall than any breeding plumaged Pacific I have seen. I continued to approach it slowly, stopping to look at it every ten or twenty metres, while keeping the recording going, ready for a flight-call when I took one step too many. Eventually it took off, and called beautifully once, then five or six times more as it crossed over to the east end, the sound degrading as it became more distant. I had to leave then and it wasn't until late yesterday evening that I had a chance to review the images.The first thing I did was prepare a montage to show how different-looking this bird is compared to the beautiful breeding plumaged male American Golden Plover that Noel Keogh found at Tacumshin on 6 June. It wasn't until after I sent a copy of this to irishbirding that I began to analyse the images more carefully.... and immediately, doubts set in. While the bird's rear end looks long and attentuated from a certain angle, it looks a little truncated in most of the true profile shots. At the range I viewed the bird it was still difficult to resolve details of the tertials/wing-tip, but it is clearly not as long-winged as the American we had in June. In addition to the prominent projection of the toes beyond the tip of the tail noted during the initial encounter, the extremely restricted white on the breast-sides is difficult to reconcile with American. Perhaps more important than any of the above however, is the sound-recording; some of the calls produced by these two species sound very alike, but I have to say that the call I recorded is virtually identical to Pacific (though it is not the familiar Spotted Redshank-like 'chuitt', which is a call I have heard from both species).
The main purpose of this message is to alert birders who may be in the area today to the strong possibility that this bird will, after all, prove to be a Pacific. If not, I have even more to learn about golden plover identification than I thought. Give me a sandplover any day....!
Regards,
Killian
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