Pectoral Sandpiper; you must be thinking that is just another bird. So what is the big fuss about sighting one? Well, sighting one in India is super huge 😀 !

The Pectoral Sandpiper is a small shorebird. They are known to breed in the tundra of eastern Russia, into Alaska and northern Canada. Most of them winter in South America. But is known that a few of them migrate to Australiasia. So the chances of sighting one in India is extremely rare. So when does show up, it makes for big news in the birding community.

We were heading back to Bangalore from our birding trip from Point Calimere (read about that exciting trip here) when we heard from our friend Rahul, of the sighting of a Pectoral Sandpiper at a lake in Coimbatore. Mid way on the return journey, we decided to twitch (pursuit and observation of rare birds) it. We turned around and headed towards Coimbatore instead to take a chance with it. It is not everyday that one gets a chance to see such a rare vagrant in India.

We reached the lake by around 3:30pm. We decided to give it a go that evening itself. But the bird was nowhere to seen. The birds that were uncommon that we sighted in that session included a Shaheen Falcon (a sub-species of the Peregrine Falcon), a Sanderling (we wondered what one was doing so inland), Ruff and Garganey. It was a reasonably large water body. We atleast were able to note down the area that the waders seemed to prefer. We decided to try again the following morning at the spot.

The morning session next day turned to be fruitful. There were a few other birders who were already there when reached the area. They had spotted the Pectoral Sandpiper. There was excitement all around. We peered through our binoculars to get our first glimpse. And we were all elated to see it.

All through the period that we were there, the bird continued to forage on an island that was quite a bit of distance from the bank we were standing on. Here are some pictures that I managed to take of it:

Though it remained relatively far away, we were all satisfied with the sighting. We were glad that we had decided to come and try to see it. By around 10am we decided it was time to start back on our journey to Bangalore.

Interested in another birds that I had twitched? You can read about us twitching for a Lesser Noddy here.