Last Sunday’s fabulous Dawn Chorus by Ocean Diver got me pining for more shorebirds. So I decided I’d use today’s Dawn Chorus to explore shorebirds a bit more. But once I got started, I realized the enormity of what I set out to do — and realized it’s too much for one Dawn Chorus. So I’m only doing birds a through K in this post. I’ll pick up the rest of the alphabet when I’m next up in the queue in mid-June. I hope you enjoy this half about shorebirds.
Shorebirds are a diverse group of birds that include sandpipers, plovers, turnstones, knots, curlews, dowitchers, and phalaropes. This group does not include herons, gulls, or cormorants.
North America has the greatest diversity of shorebird species and the largest numbers of shorebirds in the world.
Shorebirds are amazing. They’re among the most incredible athletes in nature, with some making multi-day, non-stop flights to reach their wintering or breeding areas. While they’re often considered brownish and dull, certain species are strikingly colorful for a few summer months. If you’re lucky enough to visit the Arctic—where many of them breed—you may also find them performing complex aerial displays and songs. It contrasts their quiet, demure behavior on the North American mudflats at other seasons. But it’s at those other times that they gather in spectacular numbers, sometimes in the tens of thousands, creating an exceptional spectacle for birders to take in.
Yet for newer birders (and a handful of experts), learning shorebirds can feel absurd. Part of the problem is that there are dozens of North American species: up to 57 regulars, with nearly 40 in the sandpiper family alone. Some are truly similar to each other (ahem, yellowlegs); others are confusing due to their various plumages over different ages and seasons (hello, sandpipers).
Let’s start with the American Avocet, one of my favorite shorebirds. They frequently hang out with Black-necked Stilts which is pretty nice because you can photograph both species together quite often. They are similarly-sized birds and they troll the waters at about the same depth looking for food. Note how the avocet in the first photo is swishing his right foot in the water to roust tiny prey.
Here’s some basic information about the American Avocet from Audubon’s All About Birds website:
The American Avocet takes elegance to a new level. This long-legged wader glides through shallow waters swishing its slender, upturned bill from side to side to catch aquatic invertebrates. It dons a sophisticated look for summer with a black-and-white body and a rusty head and neck. During the winter the head and neck turn a grayish white, but the bird loses none of its elegance as it forages along coastal waters or rests while standing on one leg.
In response to predators, the American Avocet gives a series of call notes that gradually rise in pitch, simulating the Doppler effect and making its approach seem faster than it actually is.
- A female American Avocet sometimes lays eggs in the nest of another female, who incubates them without noticing. This is called “brood parasitism,” and American Avocets may do it to other species, too; American Avocet eggs have been found in the nests of Mew Gulls. On the other hand, species such as Common Terns and Black-necked Stilts may also parasitize avocet nests. In the case of the stilts, the avocets reared the hatchlings as if they were their own.
- American Avocets place their nests directly on the ground without the benefit of shrubs to provide shade. To keep the eggs from overheating during incubation, they dip their belly feathers in water.
- American Avocet chicks leave the nest within 24 hours of hatching. Day-old avocets can walk, swim, and even dive to escape predators.
- The oldest recorded American Avocet was at least 15 years old when it was found in California, where it had been banded a decade and a half earlier.
Let’s next look at the Black Oystercatcher: A large, conspicuous, and noisy bird of the Pacific Coast, the Black Oystercatcher can be found along rocky shores from Alaska to Baja California.
- Black Oystercatchers from Alaska to about Oregon are entirely black, but southward from there birds show increasing amounts of white feathers and browner (less black) abdomens.
- The oldest recorded Black Oystercatcher was at least 6 years, 2 months old when it was recaptured and re-released during banding operations in British Columbia.
What next? How about the Black Turnstone? (Audubon is going alphabetical, so I will, too.)
The Black Turnstone is one of the defining species for the rocky, wave-battered Pacific Coast. It blends in well with the dark rocks, but a careful winter observer will find it from Alaska through Baja California. It is rarely found far from the vicinity of spraying waves.
- As their name suggests, turnstones often forage by turning over stones and other objects.
- On the breeding grounds, the Black Turnstone is extremely aggressive to avian predators, flying more than 100 m from its territory to pursue jaegers and gulls.
- The oldest recorded Black Turnstone was a female and was at least 8 years old when she was recaptured and re-released during banding operations in Alaska.
Before going further, a note about habitat. Habitats used by migrating shorebirds range from intertidal mudflats to sandy beaches and rocky intertidal areas. Migrating shorebirds need feeding areas with high concentrations of intertidal invertebrates and roosting areas, such as sand/gravel bars, rock islands and ledges, and saltmarsh pannes that remain above the high water mark during high tide, thus allowing the birds to rest and preen when feeding areas are unavailable. These habitats, used only during migration, are called “staging areas”. Staging areas provide migrating shorebirds with the food resources required to acquire the large fat reserves necessary to fuel their transoceanic migration to wintering areas.
Black-necked Stilts: Ocean Diver did such a nice job showing and writing about the stilts she saw and photographed on Little Cayman so I’m not going to spend time duplicating her work. From Audubon:
Black-necked Stilts are among the most stately of the shorebirds, with long rose-pink legs, a long thin black bill, and elegant black-and-white plumage that make them unmistakable at a glance. They move deliberately when foraging, walking slowly through wetlands in search of tiny aquatic prey. When disturbed, stilts are vociferous, to put it mildly, and their high, yapping calls carry for some distance.
- Five species of rather similar-looking stilts are recognized in the genus Himantopus. They have the second-longest legs in proportion to their bodies of any bird, exceeded only by flamingos.
- The Hawaiian subspecies of Black-necked Stilt (knudseni) has the black of its neck reaching much farther forward than the mainland forms. Habitat loss and hunting led to a sharp decline in its numbers. The few freshwater wetlands found on the Hawaiian Islands are its main habitat. Its name in the Hawaiian language is Aeo, which means "one standing tall.”
- Black-necked stilts sometimes participate in a "popcorn display,” which involves a group of birds gathering around a ground predator and jumping, hopping, or flapping to drive it away from their nests.
- The oldest recorded Black-necked Stilt was at least 12 years, 5 months old. it was banded in Venezuela and refound in the Lesser Antilles.
- Black-necked Stilt and American Avocet belong to the same family (Recurvirostridae), and they are capable of hybridizing and producing young. The hybrid offspring are rare. Birders who have documented this cross have given it the nickname “avo-stilt.”
-
Greater Yellowlegs: Often referred to as a “marshpiper” for its habit of wading in deeper water than other sandpipers, the Greater Yellowlegs is heftier and longer-billed than its lookalike, the Lesser Yellowlegs. Greater Yellowlegs are seen mostly during migration, as they pass between nesting grounds in the mosquito-ridden bogs of boreal Canada and wintering territories on marshes across the southern tier of the United States. With its flashy yellow legs, sturdy bill, and deliberate gait, it cuts a dashing, often solitary, figure on mudflats from coast to coast.
Colloquial names for this species include telltale, tattler, and yelper, all of which refer to its strident alarm calls.
- Despite its familiarity and widespread range, its tendency to nest in buggy bogs in the North American boreal forests make it one of the least-studied shorebirds on the continent.
- Though typically associated with wetlands, Greater Yellowlegs on their breeding grounds often perch atop trees to watch for nest predators.
Killdeer: A shorebird you can see without going to the beach, Killdeer are graceful plovers common to lawns, golf courses, athletic fields, and parking lots. These tawny birds run across the ground in spurts, stopping with a jolt every so often to check their progress, or to see if they’ve startled up any insect prey. Their voice, a far-carrying, excited kill-deer, is a common sound even after dark, often given in flight as the bird circles overhead on slender wings.
From Audubon:
- Killdeer get their name from the shrill, wailing kill-deer call they give so often. Eighteenth-century naturalists also noticed how noisy Killdeer are, giving them names such as the Chattering Plover and the Noisy Plover.
- Gravel rooftops attract Killdeer for nesting, but can be dangerous places to raise a brood. Chicks may be unable to leave a roof because of high parapets and screened drain openings. Adults eventually lure chicks off the roof, which can be dangerous – although one set of chicks survived a leap from a seven-story building.
- The Killdeer’s broken-wing act leads predators away from a nest, but doesn’t keep cows or horses from stepping on eggs. To guard against large hoofed animals, the Killdeer uses a quite different display, fluffing itself up, displaying its tail over its head, and running at the beast to attempt to make it change its path.
- A well-known denizen of dry habitats, the Killdeer is actually a proficient swimmer. Adults swim well in swift-flowing water, and chicks can swim across small streams.
- The male and female of a mated pair pick out a nesting site through a ritual known as a scrape ceremony. The male lowers his breast to the ground and scrapes a shallow depression with his feet. The female then approaches, head lowered, and takes his place. The male then stands with body tilted slightly forward, tail raised and spread, calling rapidly. Mating often follows.
- Killdeer lay their eggs into an empty nest but add other materials later on. Some of these items they pick up as they are leaving and toss over their shoulder into the nest. In one nest in Oklahoma, people found more than 1,500 pebbles had accumulated this way.
- The oldest recorded Killdeer was at least 10 years, 11 months old when it was recaptured and rereleased during banding operations in Kansas.motivation, and for these hemispheric migrants, departure time for the next journey is never far off.
I’ll pick up the rest of the shorebirds in my next Dawn Chorus. In the meantime, use this as an Open Thread to share any and all things birding, any new sights you’ve seen, and anything else you deem relevant. My Hooded Orioles have finally shown up and both the male and female have been at the feeder multiple times while I’ve been writing this. Your turn. What’s going on in your birding world?