Black-tailed Godwit on the Whanganui River Estuary

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Paul Gibson
Posts: 263
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 9:49 am
Location: Whanganui

Black-tailed Godwit on the Whanganui River Estuary

Postby Paul Gibson » Sat Mar 30, 2019 3:37 pm

A nice find this afternoon on the Whanganui River Estuary was a black-tailed godwit, that seems to be part of a group of 12, who have just turned up, so maybe passing through. Nice to see the white under-wing, that makes identification easy.
A47I9886s.jpg
A47I9886s.jpg (42.34 KiB) Viewed 1916 times
A47I9881s.jpg
A47I9881s.jpg (60.59 KiB) Viewed 1916 times
Clinton9
Posts: 1008
Joined: Sat Aug 07, 2010 10:22 pm

Re: Black-tailed Godwit on the Whanganui River Estuary

Postby Clinton9 » Sat Mar 30, 2019 4:08 pm

Strangely this Bar-tailed godwit with moult pattern ...I thought this moult pattern was supposed to be on January not March, and Bar-tailed godwits left NZ for Yellow sea, China, few weeks ago, on March.
Paul Gibson
Posts: 263
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2013 9:49 am
Location: Whanganui

Re: Black-tailed Godwit on the Whanganui River Estuary

Postby Paul Gibson » Sun Mar 31, 2019 7:43 pm

I am no expert on moult in godwits, but an interesting observation. The last of the godwits migrated just this last week. We checked the Whanganui estuary this afternoon, and found a few barwits, but no black-tails.
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philbattley
Posts: 666
Joined: Wed May 20, 2009 2:21 pm

Re: Black-tailed Godwit on the Whanganui River Estuary

Postby philbattley » Tue Apr 02, 2019 9:16 am

We often see a few individuals like this at this time of year. They're presumably either adults that have been delayed in arriving in NZ and are so late in moult they cannot migrate, or immatures that are doing a moult that doesn't match their conventional adult timing. I suspect it is the latter, but we have no actual information on the age of such birds.

Cheers, Phil

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