Yesterday’s Southern Masked Weaver gallery depicted a common bird that is not very likely to turn up in Europe, North America, or Asia anytime soon so how about a bird that is widespread across a large portion of the planet, but is still something of a rarity in Canada and the US - the startlingly beautiful Ruff Philomachus pugnax.

Startlingly beautiful, anyway, when the males are decked out in the extravagant tufts and plumes they wear in the brief breeding season. For the rest of the year both sexes are much more ‘typically’ calidrid-like - well-marked and distinctively shaped, but not so obvious that every birder would identify one in a heartbeat. So, in a gesture that we hope readers now recognise as being what marks out 10,000 Birds, here are a selection of non-breeding adult Ruffs (taken at Marievale Ramsar site in South Africa a few years ago) that may just help you instantly put a name to the odd shorebird you find in front of you this September…

Ruffs are medium-sized as far as shorebirds go, and are usually considered the only member of its genus. They breed in bogs, marshes and wet meadows with short vegetation in northern Europe and Russia, wintering in small numbers in southern and western Europe, but mainly in Africa and India. They are highly gregarious, with a wintering flock of 1 million birds reported from Senegal. A rare migrant to North America, Ruffs have attempted to breed in Alaska and are widely reported on both western and eastern coasts (and very rarely inland).

Juveniles look somewhat like juvenile Buff-breasted Sandpipers (and mis-identifications have been made in the past), but non-breeding adults are more distinctive and once seen should be easily recognised again: look for the predominantly white underparts, brightly coloured legs (usually red or orange), the pot-bellied/small-headed shape, and long tertials cloaking the short primaries (giving a blunt-winged effect).

Males appear appreciably larger and bulkier than females (known as ‘reeves’) in mixed flocks, but otherwise they are so variable in size and plumage that many can’t be certainly sexed when they’re seen on their own (some males seem to show a remnant of the ruff all year-round, but many don’t). I felt that the birds in the photographs below were females, but I’m certainly open to any suggestions that (especially looking at the bird with the Little Stint) there may be a male here too. However, whichever sex they are, there’s no doubt that all three are non-breeding Ruffs, so have a good look and inwardly digest those features…after all, you never know what you might find the next time you visit a marsh…

 

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With non-breeding adult Little Stint Calidris minuta

 

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Photographs copyright Charlie Moores 2008