European bird lands in Olympia

OLYMPIA – A European bird believed to be a stranger to the lower 48 states has been hanging around the ponds at the Ocean Shores sewage treatment plant for the past week.

The Temminck’s stint has attracted more than 600 serious birders – many from the south Puget Sound area and some from as far away as Florida, said Olympia bird book author Bob Morse. It is even more rare than the redwing thrush from Eurasia that appeared in Olympia last winter – an event that attracted more than 1,000 birders over a two-month period.

The Temminck’s stint, Calidris temminckii, is a tiny wader drawn to freshwater ponds, lakes and marshes. It breeds in Scandinavia and Russia and winters in the Middle East and North Africa, Morse said. The bird might have ended up in Ocean Shores through what Morse called reverse migration: “Typically, these birds head south to winter. This bird went north.”

There are no recorded sightings of the stint in the Lower 48.