Happily, the range of the Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs rarely overlap in Alaska. If you see the bird in Southcentral or Southeastern Alaska, it’s probably a Greater Yellowlegs.
Greater Yellowlegs, Westchester Lagoon, Anchorage
The Greater is, as the label suggests, somewhat larger than the Lesser Yellowlegs, but unless you have them side-by-side, it’s hard to tell. The bill is significantly longer in the Greater, longer than the head, which sometimes helps. The call is very different, but the Greaters aren’t quite as vocal as the Lessers.
But if birding were easy, if telling Lessers from Greaters were easy, it wouldn’t be as much fun.
The signature shore bird of the boreal forest might be the Lesser Yellowlegs. William Rowan got it exactly right when he wrote, “They will be perched there as though the safety of the entire universe depended on the amount of noise they made.”Lesser Yellowlegs provide biparental care to its kids but the females…
Here's another falcon, slightly smaller than last week's Peregrine Falcon. The Merlin is a remarkably fierce predator; WC has watched them kill and fly off with birds as large as a Lesser Yellowlegs. An adult female Merlin weighs about 8.5 ounces; a Lesser Yellowlegs weighs about 3 ounces. That's 40%…
Lesser Scaup is another species of marsh and sea duck that breeds far inland in Interior Alaska. Lesser Scaup are notoriously difficult to tell from their close cousins, Greater Scaup. Their ranges overlap, too. But by slight differences in the head, neck and pattern on the back, you can usually…
All these feathered friends pics are fantastic,but don’t you have any pics of evil,right wing dingbats to scare our grandkids with?
This is the first yellowlegs I’ve ever seen. Lovely.