Unstinted efforts seeking the stints of Pallikaranai

 29th August 2026

I wonder why it has taken me so long to put this down.  I guess life happened.

Srinivas took me along to the SW tower of Pallikaranai where we met with Sagarika - to check out the waders that had arrived.  

Waders are cute.
They are magical - little, tiny bodies that migrate long distances. How? how?

We reached, and my heart sank.

There were earthmovers and earth moved.  Would the birds have come to this disturbed habitat?

What a mess we make.  The earthmoving teams were cheery as they told us how they were going to fill and level all this wasteland - "private property ma", they emphasised, as I wailed my protest to them at the mud dystopia.

We clambered over piles - up and down the dunes - Srinivas with a fractured toe on top of everything else - and we reached the protected part of the marsh.  I was not in a birding frame of mind, more a despairing state of mind.

Familiar faces - Subbu and his son, with a scope emerged as well.  

As we reached the wall and railings that surround the protected part of the marsh, the chattering of  Black Winged Stilts drowned out everything else, and slowly I unwound, I saw the cormorants on the tower, the spot billed ducks in the water and the coots and the lapwings.  

Black-winged stilts a plenty.  These four were "engaging" with each other - I couldn't make out if they were quarrelling or partaking in some excited banter.  I watched them for a while as the other humans agitated about the waders - were there any long-toed stints was the refrain?

The spot-billed ducks preened and paddled in the water.  They are such pretty ducks that we ignore because they are residents, not glamorous visiting foreigners.  😀

I joined in the wader huddle  - moved my binoculars to the mud ridges and I gasped - there were scores of these little birds, so well camouflaged in the mud!

See the pair of Little Ringed Plovers - Thinornis dubius - to the left.  Such dubious naming I tell you.

I believe there was an Italian physician and naturalist called Giovanni Antonio Scopoli.  Now he was in correspondence with another French naturalist Pierre Sonnerat.  The latter was one of the early European naturalists collecting on the Coromandel Coast, based out of Pondy.  A little ringed plover was found by Sonnerat in the Philippines and sent to Scopoli.

Sonnerat thought it was a variation of Common Ringed Plover and Scopoli thought it was a different species.  This "dubiousness" supposedly gave the Latin name, believe it or not.  

This one was resting - see how the browns merge. I wonder when it had arrived from the northern continents.

This Wood Sandpiper was also dozing.  Quite endearing was this Tringa on one leg.

But it was the stints that were being checked upon.

Stints - busy little things usually, though that day, they were uncharacteristically still I thought.  I wondered if they were in resting mode, maybe just migrated in, or maybe the 430 evening sun was still too much for them.  

Stints are mini sandpipers for me.  Like someone shrunk them.

Little Stint — Calidris minuta — literally the little one. Dark legs

Long-toed Stint — C. subminuta — sub-minuta, really small! (No I didn't look for the long toes, just for yellow legs, a mini wood sandpiper like mottling and the beak seems a bit downturned?

Temminck's Stint - C. temminckii — pale legs and a kind of grey body, a little more dull.  

This stint was named  Tringa temminckii in 1812 by Johann Philipp Achilles Leisler.   Leisler named it after his buddy Temminck.   Coenraad Temminck was a Dutch naturalist who did not travel much but worked on other people's collections.  Was quite wealthy it seems and even had his own museum! 

When they are together - easy to see the size difference - the taller Wood sandpiper next to the Little Stint. I love they way they are more or less peaceable with each other.

Subbu's scope we also saw the far away Ruffs quite well.

A pied starling posed for us.

As did this Oriental Skylark. (Alauda gulgula) We heard it before seeing it and then it walked back and forth in the mud so we all got a good look at its jaunty crest and delicate legs.

I did not see it do the shoot-up-in-the-air ritual, but I was happy to see one nevertheless - it made our grassland/marshland visit complete.

Oh and there was an unusual sight as we returned - a bunch of 3 Glossy ibises were flying with a flock of 20 black-headed ibises!  Very strange!  Like they got on the wrong bus.  Wrong plane I should say.

We made our way back across the dunes and back home.  Sagarika saw House sparrows on her walk back.

Srinivas and I saw a lot of road traffic.  I was so glad it was him driving and not me.  Thank you Srinivas!

The complete ebird list of 49 species is here.

I thought I had figured out the stints and was feeling very pleased with the outing and myself.  A month later and here I was back to square one, all forgotten.  Thanks to Sagarika's "unstinting" and patient efforts - I managed to find and identify them in my photos over the last few days.

I am hoping that I can come back to this post when I am in Stint mode again.