Whimbrels-R-Us

 On 29 November Rob Clay reported (and photographed) a Whimbrel from Captain Stevenson's Point at Mallacoota.  I was in Canberra then so couldn't get out there until this morning (1 December).  

On first getting to the Point the light didn't look that good for bird photography (nor, come to that, continued ocular health).

However on swinging my telescope around a few degrees to the NE I found not one, but two birds which I thought were Whimbrels and have subsequently been agreed to be that species.  The first two images are digiscoped while the third is cropped (pretty severely) from my camera.

In coming to the conclusion of the identification I bear in mind a comment - in about 1985 - by the late Stephen Marchant when asked if Whimbrels were like Curlews.  His response was along the lines of "Dear boy, they're completely different."  To him that was probably the case, but for mortals the obvious difference is the length of the bill: Rob Clay addressed this by saying that for the Eastern Curlew the bill is about the length of the bird's back while the Whimbrel is much shorter.  To reinforce this I have extracted some details on bill lengths from HANZAB (omitting some extreme cases these seems a fair summary).

Note that there is almost no overlap between the 4 groups.  To explore the relativities to length of back I have looked at the ratio of length of bill (taking an average for each species) to overall length (at the start of the HANZAB species accounts.  

Clearly the bill of a Whimbrel is not only shorter in absolute terms but also relative to the body size.  (A relative difference is still evident, but not quite so pronounced,  if comparing a female Whimbrel with a male Curlew.)
 
I have interrogated my set of eBird records to see how unusual this is.  ( I have over the years we have been coming here spent quite a few unsuccessful hours peering at various largeish brownish waders hoping for a Whimbrel.  They have just about been awarded "Painted" status: Ian Fraser has commented that any bird with 'Painted' in its vernacular name is a pigment of the observers imagination.  However eBird has 33 records of this species.  Looking at occurrence over the years in the Mallacoota District gives the next chart.

For the years since 2014 - when eBird became the recording process of choice - there is usually 1 or 2 records per year.  2018 is unusual with no records.  2014 is also unusual with 7 records and as they are in different months spread through the year I conclude that a young bird over-wintered here that year.

On the subject of seasonality the species is clearly a Summer Migrant.

The lack of records from the suggested overwintering bird in June to August simply reflects the seasonal pattern of tourists: they're wimps who don't come here in Winter.

I also looked at eBird records for East Gippsland.  This amounted to 49 birds.  Given that the coastline of my version of Mallacoota District (Wingan to the Border) is roughly 20% of the total straight-line length of the sea length in East Gippsland in total that is a very interesting outcome.  If one adds the many kilometres of shoreline in the Gippsland Lakes it is even more intriguing.