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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the the May 22, 2011 Newsletter issued from written at Mayan Beach Garden Inn 20 kms north of Mahahual, Quintana Roo, México
WHITE-RUMPED SANDPIPERS
I thought I was seeing little flocks of Western Sandpipers. The two birds shown above looked pretty much like the Western Sandpipers in my field guide.
However, Western Sandpipers are listed as winter visitors in this part of the world, so now in late May shouldn't they be on their way to their nesting grounds in western coastal Alaska?
*UPDATE: In 2024, with many more identification resources on the Internet, I upload the above picture to iNaturalist, where within an hour user "villerih" in Finland recognizes that our picture shows White-rumped Sandpipers, CALIDRIS FUSCICOLLIS.
I don't recall ever hearing about that species, but it appears to be much more interesting than that of Western Sandpipers. Wikipedia's White-rumped Sandpiper page explains that the species seldom is spotted. In the summer the birds breed in the isolated northern tundra of Canada and Alaska, and they overwinter so far south, in southern South America, that few birders report them; they're considered one of the most extreme long-distance migrants on Earth. The birds in our picture were discovered during their extremely long migration.