Monsoon seemed to have taken a nap, to recharge itself, after weeks of heavy rain and thunderstorms. Sky was clear and it was a pleasant day. I was busy with a tight work schedule. On 25 July 2019 after some client appointments, I decided to visit a nearby hotspot, Changaram wetlands (9°47’54.4” N, 76°17’12.1” E) as a cool off. I had heard of some interesting sightings reported from the location. I reached Changaram around 17.30hrs . I saw my friend, Sumesh, a senior birder, walking along the road across a paddy field and I joined him. He showed me a Grey Plover Pluvialis squatarola and also some migratory terns like Caspian Tern Hydroprogne caspia, Common Tern Sterna hirundo, Greater Crested Tern Thalasseus bergii, Lesser Crested Tern Thalasseus bengalensis, etc. I was really excited because these birds were a bit early here this season.

We observed an injured Common Tern being chased by crows. A flock of Black-tailed Godwits Limosa limosa circled above us. We searched for the injured Common Tern again, which was about 100 meters away. Suddenly I spotted two birds that had just landed there. I asked Sumesh to have a look. I focused my camera on them and clicked some pictures, but the photographs were not clear. Viewing through the binoculars, Sumesh thought that they could be Bar-tailed Godwits Limosa lapponica. Then he clicked a couple of shots using my camera. After looking at the images, Sumesh said that they looked like Dowitcher. Then we checked with the bird identification app Merlin and it identified the birds as a Long-billed Dowitcher Limnodromus scolopaceus. But these birds which we had seen had all-black bill instead of the reddish/bi-coloured bill of the Long-billed Dowitcher. Only Asian Dowitcher L. semipalmatus has black bill. We checked the species status in eBird and realized, to our surprise and joy, that this could be a new addition to the bird species of Kerala. We posted the available images immediately to ‘Kerala Bird Monitoring’ Whatsapp group. After discussions, experts confirmed that the bird was indeed Asian Dowitcher, a new species for Kerala.

The next day, much better pictures were obtained and many birders visited Changaram to see the star attraction. As per eBird, more than 30 birders got to see these birds during the next few days and they contributed 76 images to the eBird website! The last sighting was by Sudheesh Mohan on 3 August 2019 indicating that it had stayed here for at least ten days.
In south India, Asian Dowitcher has been reported from the coasts of Andhra Pradesh & Tamil Nadu (Venkatraman & Gokula, 2009; eBird, 2019) and Goa (Baidya & Bhagat, 2018); but this is the first report from Kerala.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to team Ezhupunna birders for the great support and help rendered.

References

1. Baidya, P., & Bhagat, M. (2018). A checklist of the birds of Goa, India. Indian BIRDS, 14 (1): 1–31.
2. eBird. (2019). Asian Dowitcher (Limnodromus semipalmatus). Website URL: https://ebird.org/map/asidow1?env.minX=27.5108306386993&env.minY=-44.5382264296299&env.maxX=175.73285251842&env.maxY=52.591703034972 (Accessed on 1 December 2019)
3. Venkatraman, C., & Gokula, V. (2009). Coastal birds of Tamil Nadu. Records of the Zoological Survey of India, Occasional Paper No. 303: 1–64.