Little Stint

Description:

This is a very small wader (fam Scolopacidae), and the most abundant one. It reaches less than 15 cm in length, and has black legs and black slender bill. Its overall winter appearance is greyish, with pale or white underparts. Gregarious, and often found in large flocks, including with other Calidris genus members.

Habitat:

Found in estuaries, lagoons, lakes and wetlands. Here seen on shores of lake Turkana in Kenya, foraging with many other shorebirds (stilts, plovers, lapwings, sandpipers, godwit, greenshank, ruff) and other (gulls, storks, cormorants, ibises, egrets and herons). The Rift Valley lakes are parts of its wintering range; this is a very common palearctic migrant, and common in subsaharan Africa between August and April.

Notes:

Lake Turkana is saline desert lake and the biggest water mass of Rift valley lake system. Currently, this lake is in danger - over the past decade, Ethiopia has embarked on a massive plan which includes constructing dams, developing water-intensive irrigated cotton and sugar plantations, and irrigation canals and other infrastructure in Ethiopia’s Omo River Basin. These developments are predicted to dramatically reduce the water supply of Lake Turkana, as Omo River provides 90 percent of the water in it. Dramatic reductions in freshwater input from the Omo River into Lake Turkana will increase levels of salinity in the lake and raise water temperatures, decimating fish breeding areas and mature fish populations. Higher air temperatures will increase rates of evaporation, further increasing salinity while reducing biological productivity... which would later on influence the entire ecological system.