Two Pectoral Sandpipers!

Two juvenile Pectoral Sandpipers (Calidris melanotos)

Late on Monday evening (Sep 19), a second Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) was discovered in Las Martelas, having joined the individual featured in the previous post, and both were photographed this morning (Sep 20) in two neighbouring irrigation tanks.

The birds started foraging in close proximity to each other, in the rather grim, man-made habitat shown below:

The far from idyllic surroundings can be appreciated in the next image: food items gathered on the sheer concrete slopes of the basin were mostly insects, including dragonfly and their larvae. A couple of Common Sandpipers were also searching for food in the same manner:


Eventually, the two Pectorals moved across to the sunny side of the pond, where I managed to photograph one of them, before both flew off to another basin:


The two birds were soon re-located and the two remaining pictures, plus the one at the top of this post, were taken in much better light conditions:

Pectoral Sandpipers foraging on a floating layer of pondweed