Red-necked stint - Calidris ruficollis
Stints are the smallest of the migratory waders – barely the size of a sparrow. The red-necked stint is the only stint species to regularly occur in New Zealand, with up to 200 spending the southern summer here each year. They are most often seen at high-tide roosts associating with other small waders, especially wrybills, and other sandpipers.
A tiny, delicate, nondescript wader with dark legs and a short, straight black bill. Red-necked stints in breeding plumage have a distinctive rufous ‘balaclava’, but otherwise they are pale grey-brown above and off-white below throughout the year. Dorsal feathers with dark shafts and pale fringes; flight feathers dark, with slight white wing bar. Rump white with dark centre. Feeds with rapid stabbing action - www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz
Red-necked stint - Calidris ruficollis
Stints are the smallest of the migratory waders – barely the size of a sparrow. The red-necked stint is the only stint species to regularly occur in New Zealand, with up to 200 spending the southern summer here each year. They are most often seen at high-tide roosts associating with other small waders, especially wrybills, and other sandpipers.
A tiny, delicate, nondescript wader with dark legs and a short, straight black bill. Red-necked stints in breeding plumage have a distinctive rufous ‘balaclava’, but otherwise they are pale grey-brown above and off-white below throughout the year. Dorsal feathers with dark shafts and pale fringes; flight feathers dark, with slight white wing bar. Rump white with dark centre. Feeds with rapid stabbing action - www.nzbirdsonline.org.nz