I was checking the various islands that have appeared on Burrowes Pit near Dennis's Hide at RSPB Dungeness for any interesting waders and counting the distant Ringed and Little Ringed Plovers and Common Sandpipers when I came across a small wader that looked odd. It was smaller than the nearby Little Ringed Plovers and I couldn't identify it, bugger! I thought it looked like a small sandpiper and just as I was grabbing my camera it flew. Luckily it landed on a group of closer islands and I took a load of poor photos. I thought it might be a Baird's Sandpiper but it wasn't quite right and I still couldn't make an identification. There was no one else around and I was panicking, I tentatively put out a message on the Locals group. Shortly afterwards locals arrived and opinion on the identification was still unsure, made even trickier as the bird had disappeared.
After a short while, I picked up a small wader distantly on islands out from Dennis's Hide and we started to check out what features we could see but still nothing seemed to make sense to clinch an id. The features that were confusing were the rufous tones to the scapulars and the dull brown/grey breast band. There was plenty of discussion and features mentioned such as mantle tramlines and a split supercilium should have drawn us to a positive identification but I think it is fair to say that the colour and appearance of the breast band drew us away from the fact that it is a moulting adult Little Stint, likely the first returning adult of the autumn.
To be honest, I was expecting to see more reddish tones around the head and breast not the dull looking brownish/grey (or at least that's what the colours look like to me) and that one expectation blocked out the fact that it was a Little Stint, until after going around and around with other possible id's, that's all it could be.
Looking at the photos now, it is so much more obviously a Little Stint but even checking photos at the time when the bird was in view it just wasn't obvious.
It had been one of those occasions when I had to make a decision on whether to take time trying to identify the bird before informing others and risk losing it or having a quick go at identification and then making a call.
The photos below of the moulting adult Little Stint are cropped images taken from outside Dennis's Hide shortly after I first found the bird.
Later in the afternoon, I was standing at the Firth Lookout when the same adult Little Stint suddenly appeared and this time much closer.
Also from Firth Viewpoint were 3 Greenshanks, a 2CY Little Gull and a Wood Sandpiper.
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