Canada’s calling but Kini Bay’s cool

He should be in Arctic Canada right now but somehow he has  landed up in Kini Bay.

No-one is  quite sure how he got here, but bird enthusiasts from near and far have flocked to see him in his home away from home on the rocky shore of the southwest side of Port Elizabeth.

The lone white-rumped sandpiper was spotted at the weekend by Kini Bay resident Kirkwood West, who posted the news on the birding grapevine.

Twitchers from around the Eastern Cape and the country sprang into action and have since converged in the Bay.

But Nelson Mandela Bay birder Barry Kurten got down there first and said the bird was strangely tame.

“He’s very approachable. I hid behind a rock in order to get a photograph and the next thing I know he had walked up right next to me almost too close to photograph.

“It might be because his radar’s still a bit out and he’s a bit disorientated.

“Or perhaps because in his home range in northern Canada there aren’t many people so he doesn’t see us as a threat.”

Kurten said the bird seemed to be favouring the stromatolite pools linked to the numerous freshwater seeps on Kini Bay Beach. 

“He’s in full breeding plumage but he looks young and is in very good condition.

“He’s eating non-stop in and around the pools and probably in the next few days once he’s reset his radar he’ll head off again across the ocean.”

Stromatolites are ancient cement-like microbe and sediment coastal formations that occur in just a few places in the world including around Port Elizabeth.

Stromatolite expert Dr Gavin Rishworth of NMU said the stromatolite pools, usually filled with freshwater from the seeps, attracted a range of local waders and other birds and creatures like otters who feasted on resident insects and crustaceans like shrimps and crabs.

“So it seems this new arrival liked the look of these pools in terms of the access they offer to food and fresh water,” Rishworth said.

According to the Cornell Lab All About Birds website, the white-rumped sandpiper is considered one of the most extreme long-distance migrants in the world.

Each year with the northern winter approaching, it migrates up to 4,200km one way from its nesting grounds in Canada and Alaska to southern South America.

And then as the southern winter looms it repeats the trip, but in the opposite direction, usually reaching home in early June.

Well-known Bay birder Dr Paul Martin said the apparent attraction of the stromatolites for the white-rumped sandpiper vagrant made sense.

“They’re not unlike the Arctic tundra which is where he’s supposed to be right now and a lot more so than the estuaries, mudflats and beaches he would associate with his southern range.

“They’re kind of what he was  looking for.”

Martin said he had seen the species twice before in the Eastern Cape, once on the Swartkops in 2002 and then in the Coega salt pans in 2016.

“The interesting thing was those were both summer sightings. This is the first winter sighting of the bird in the Eastern Cape.”

Typically the summer vagrants were birds that got blown eastward across the North Atlantic as they set off on their southerly flight, and once they had realigned themselves over Europe they flew down across Africa.

It was not clear at what point this winter vagrant’s northerly flight had gone wrong and what had been the deciding factors, he said.

“We really don’t know,” Martin said.