Also don't take the colours of the books so serious...I mean it depends on the light, and the season
We see Tringa nebularia in winter and it is paler ...but in summer the colour is much darker...My opinion about wood sandpiper is that its colour is rather pale while the green sandpiper looks black to me...(in fact I always waited to fly to see if the legs were longer of the tail )

Tringa glareola is a smaller bird 20 cm ....Tringa nebularia reaches 30 cm
(it is easy to estimate the size as often near it you can see the Three banded plover of 20 cm ...so it is easy to tell that it is nebularia as it is much bigger)

The bill of glareola is shorter and stright ...Nebularia has a long thin bill ...upcurved...(at this pic above you can;t say that the bill looks like a nebularia...but I believe it is only the angle of the cam)

Also in flight the birds have a different white puttern in rump(?) but I can;t explain :oops: (I have never manage to catch a glimpse of the bird in flight, camera can't follow it)

Marsh sandpiper has got a very thin bill...I can't explain...I remember a friend of mine who said me that if you see it you will ID it immediatelly becouse you haven't seen again such a thin bill...I didn't believe him ...But when I saw it few days later...yes he was right ..the bill looked like a thread...from some distance it was hard to see it
Also it is smaller ...only 23 cm....

Hi Henry ...that is an old answer .... :oops:
But after I watched the cam almost 6 months now I can tell that this is a Common Greenshank....My opinion is that all the sightings we had from September untill now ...the only bird we saw was Tringa nebularia

It isn't easy to distinguish which Tringa sp. is on cam...The most times the light it isn't enough good to tell for sure...you can't see the bill well and looks shorter. Another problem is to estimate how small or how big it is....When we have a good zoom it looks big ...but without zoom it looks small...Also the colour was different and depends if it is sunny or cloudy, morning or evening

But as we see this bird often very often ...at last I decided that we always saw a Common Greenshank until now ...at least this is my opinion...
Also I would like to tell that always when I saw this bird live on cam I was sure it was a Greenshank but when I saw it on a static picture...mmmm It was difficult to say

Sorry for my bad english...I had never confused a Greenshank in nature ...when I went for birding before years ( I was lucky enough to see all those Tringas together at migration for years at Axios Delta near Thessaloniki) but the cam gave another dimension at birdwatching...and passed a lot of years without birding for me.... :cry:
So I 'm sorry for the confusion too...

Fani

If it seemed smaller than a greenshank I would say Marsh Sandpiper. I've looked at a few books and Wood sandpiper as suggested has a dark cap and supercillium (white eye-stripe above the eye) so I don't think its this species although definately part of the tringa family.

The Marsh Sandpiper doesnt have this supercillium, like on the photo but just looks like a smaller and slightly paler version of greenshank, like on the photo. Marsh Sandpiper also occurs in the area over the SA summer.

Thanks
Henerz

Hi there, Can I ask what features of the wood sandpiper led you guys to that conclusion (i'm not questioning your opinions) but i've never seen one before, nevermind on a webcam! I notice it looks superficially like a greenshank but size is not easy to decern from the picture.
Thanks
Henerz

Thanks Landi and Fani

Thanks Landi...It's my guess too

I would guess that this is possibly a Wood Sandpiper (Tringa glareola).

Landi