We had our reserve annual review yesterday, with staff from HQ (Bedfordshire), regional office (Norwich) and of course here. We lost our ecologist Graham for a while as he dived off into the 360 hide to see a Temminck's stint. We do seem to have done well for this diminutive little wader in the past few years with sightings of up to eight birds. Temminck's stint breeds across Scandinavia eastwards and one or two even nest in Scotland (well two at least I guess - it does take two to tango after all), but they aren't seen on migration very easily in Britain.
Temminck was a Dutch aristocrat and zoologist in the 18th & 19th centuries. He was quite an explorer/naturalist with 16 bird species and lots of other animals named after him in English or Latin. My favourites are kissing gourami Helostoma temminckii and Temminck's flying squirrel (was it a flying squirrel before or after Temminck shot it?!). Few of the species he described are well known, so presumably he had a good eye and aim for the obscure, of course in his day animals were identified in the hand after having been shot.
We do pretty well here for Temminck's stints because we've created some nice large shallow freshwater areas (the Scrapes) for them to feed in. These have encouraged Temminck's stints and other waders to stop in and refuel during their migrations from Africa to Scandinavia. Temminck's stint is about the size of a sparrow and unlike the more familiar little stint has yellow/green legs, so why not see if you can follow in our ecologist's and a Dutch aristocrat's footsteps and find one here at Frampton?
John