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Temminck's Stints are very small waders. Their plumage is highly cryptic. When/if seen in Australia, they are usually in non-breeding plumage. During the non-breeding season they are all grey and white. The head, neck and chest are almost all-grey, except for a pale eye-ring and small pale spots on the frons. The front (belly, vent, undertail coverts) is white. The back is grey; only the wing feathers show a chestnut hue and have thin central dark stripes. During the breeding season the head, neck, chest and back all take on a chestnut-brown base, with striation on the head and chest and scalloping on the back. The front remains white. The eyes have dark irises. The dark-grey bill is slightly downcurved and a bit shorter than the size of the head. The legs and feet are yellow-olive. In flight the feet protrude slightly beyond the tail. Juveniles have a white front, from the throat down to the undertail coverts. The rest of the plumage is similar to non-breeding adults.

Twitcher's tip

Compared with Red-necked Stints, they have a slightly downcurved bill, rather than straight. Various species of sandpipers, which can also have brownish chests, are visibly larger.

The correct identification of waders ("shorebirds"), e.g. of the Calidris, Tringa, Actitis and related families or of the Charadrius, Pluvialis and related genera in the field can be quite tricky. We have therefore made an attempt to give some advice HERE.

The overall distribution of this species can be assessed, and specific locations where birds have been spotted can be found, based on individual sighting reports submitted by birdwatchers to ebird.org .

The global distribution of Temminck's Stint is available HERE .

Temminck's Stint are a strongly migratory species. They breed in a wide area from subarctic northern Scandinavia eastward all the way through northern Asia (to about 80 degrees latitude) to the Bering Sea and the northern base of the Kamchatka peninsula. They spend the northern winters in more southern areas. A small number stay in isolated areas around the Mediterranean, mostly in Spain, southern Sardinia, Italy and Greece, but also Tunisia, while most migrate to the Nile river valley and tropical sub-Saharan Africa and the eastern highlands. Others spend the winters in the Euphrates/Tigris lowlands, parts of southern Iran and around the Arabian peninsula. A large part of the population migrates to southern Asia, from the border of Pakistan with India eastwards, in a broad near-coastal strip around the entire subcontinent, into the Ganges river system in Bangladesh, and on into much of South-east Asia, including Taiwan and the southern half of Borneo.

Temminck's Stint is sometimes listed as a vagrant to Australia.

We have not yet spotted Temminck's Stints in Australia, but have seen them in Oman and in Europe.