First Record of the Little Stint for Mexico

A juvenile Little Stint (Calidris minuta) occurred at Estero Punta Banda, Baja California, Mexico, from 22 to 30 October 2002.The Little Stint breeds in the northern Palearctic and winters primarily in Africa and India.Since 1975 it has been found with increasing regularity as a vagrant in the New World, primarily in Alaska.The observation we report is the first record for Mexico and the first photographically documented record for Middle America.The Little Stiat (Calidris minuta) is one of seven small similarly plumaged arctic-breeding shorebirds known collectively in the United States and Canada as peeps and in Britain as stints.Members of this group pose considerable field identification challenges, the most difficult of which arise among the four small, black-legged species: the Semipalmated (C.pusilla) and Western (C.mauri) Sandpipers and the Little and Red-necked (C.ruffcollis) Stints, all of which are similar in size, structure, and plumage.WORLD RANGE The Little Stint is a long-distance migrant breeding in the high Arctic and wintering primarily in Africa.It has a world population estimated at 1,434,000 (del Hoyo et al. 1996).From June to August it breeds from northern Scandinavia east through north-central Siberia (del Hoyo et al. 1996, American Ornithologists' Union [A.O.U.I 1998), occasionally as far east as the Chukchi Peninsula at Siberia's northeastern tip (Russian literature cited by Gibson and Kessel 1992).It winters throughout Africa and the Mediterranean and east through the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf to India and Myanmar (del Hoyo et al. 1996, Zimmerman et al. 1996, A.O.U.1998, Grimmett et al. 1999); it winters rarely in Britain and southeastern Madagascar (del Hoyo et al. 1996).The Little Stint migrates widely through Europe and western Asia, typically moving south to southwest from its arctic breeding grounds.Increased attention from birders has revealed it to be rare but regular in Thailand (J.L. Dunn pers.comm.) and Hong Kong (spring only; Carey et al. 2001).Vagrants have occurred in the Cape Verde Islands, Iceland, the Faroes, Spitsbergen, Bear Island, Japan, Brunei, Papua New Guinea, and Australia (Hayman et al. 1986, Brazil 1991); there are no records from Greenland (Boertmann 1994).Fall migration takes place from July through November, spring migration from April to early June (Hayman et al. 1986).Juveniles begin their migration in late August, later than the passage of most adults, which peaks during July and early August (Hayman et al. 1986).Many immatures remain on the wintering grounds throughout their first year (del Hoyo et al. 1996).

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