Female Western Sandpipers can be substantially larger, longer legged, and longer billed than the males. The entire package can make them look quite a bit larger, especially if you have extremes.
From: <mbbirds...> <mbbirds...> On Behalf Of Brian Scanlon
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2025 2:05 AM
To: Glen Tepke <g.tepke...>
Cc: mbbirds <mbbirds...>
Subject: Re: [MBBIRDS] Re: Interesting shorebird
These birds are almost in the same plane. I don't think this is an optical illusion, just a very large individual. If you measure from bill tip to tail these are almost the same length. Birds of the World says weight varies from 22 to 35 grams, so they can get pretty chunky.
On Fri, Sep 26, 2025 at 10:07 PM 'Glen Tepke' via mbbirds <mbbirds...> <mailto:<mbbirds...> > wrote:
Could this be an example of the optical illusion created by magnifying optics that makes more distant objects appear to be larger than closer objects of the same actual size? To see an illustration of this illusion, put a rectangular object like a piece of paper on the floor and look at it with bins from several feet away. The more distant edge of the paper will appear to be longer than the closer edge even though both edges are the same length.
If you saw the larger bird in front of the other and it still looked larger, then never mind.
Good birding,
Glen Tepke
Santa Cruz
On 9/26/2025 7:48 PM, Abram Fleishman wrote:
After a fair bit of debate I am still confused by the shorebird I saw yesterday. It was the size of a Dunlin but had all the other field marks of a juvenile Western Sandpiper. Photos here if you want to weight in!
On Thu, Sep 25, 2025 at 18:26 Abram Fleishman <abfleishman...> <mailto:<abfleishman...> > wrote:
There’s an interesting shorebird at the trestle bike path over the San Lorenzo near Main Breach right now. Probably just a dunlin with a couple of western sandpipers, but it’s a fair bit bigger than the western sandpipers and very gray with a droopy bill.
