Endless Spring

Summer? Says who? For this White-rumped Sandpiper, this is still the season of spring migration.

From the middle of a flooded field in northern Ohio, Kenn writes: After a totally crazy month, the calendar has just clicked over from May -- we call it May-hem around here -- to June. So what season is it now? If you’re a White-rumped Sandpiper, it’s still spring, still the height of northward migration season.

Of course, if you’re a White-rumped Sandpiper, you’re probably not reading this blog.

If you’re a sandpiper, you’re too busy to read things like this. Especially if you’re a White-rumped. More than three dozen different species of sandpipers are found regularly in North America; all of them are at least somewhat migratory. None of them migrates north later in spring, on average, than the White-rump.

This bird has a lot of distance to cover. Its wintering sites are all in southern South America, including some as far south as the tip of the continent -- or even farther: this amazing migrant has even been recorded in Antarctica. Its nesting sites are all in high Arctic regions of Canada and Alaska, most of them north of the Arctic Circle. So when northbound birds get to the latitude of the lower 48 states, they still have some traveling ahead of them. It’s amazing how late in the spring they show up. When I was down in Texas at the beginning of May this year, I saw a few White-rumped Sandpipers, but they were among the earlier arrivals at that location, and most would be passing through in mid-May. Here in northern Ohio, White-rumps have just shown up within the last few days. Their peak passage through here will be during the first ten days of June. Their time on the Arctic tundra may be very brief: some adults, perhaps those that have failed at their nesting attempt, will be southbound before the middle of July.

See the obvious white rump on this bird? No, we can't see it either.

Birders often overlook the White-rumped Sandpiper. That may be partly because of its migration timing, slipping through after many birders have given up on spring. It’s also partly because it’s a subtle bird with few obvious field marks. Looking at the photos here, do you see any white rump patch? The bird’s namesake field mark is visible only in flight, or rarely while the bird is actively preening its feathers. Various field guides, from the second edition of Peterson’s western to some editions of the National Geographic, have illustrated this species with its wings drooped, showing off the white patch on the rump and uppertail coverts. In real life, the birds just don’t stand that way. When I see this species in spring, I usually pick it out first by its squeaky callnote, by the fine sharp streaks on the chest, and especially by the long-winged profile. Those long wings, incidentally, are a reflection of the bird’s long-distance migration.

I doubt that we can have the bird’s name changed to "Invisibly-white-rumped-and-uppertail-coverted Sandpiper," but if we called it "Long-winged Sandpiper," birders might overlook it less and appreciate it more.

Regardless, if you’re anywhere east of the Rockies, especially in the interior of the continent, early June is not too late to see the White-rumped Sandpiper in spring migration. Singles and small flocks are stopping over in all kinds of shallow wetlands, from the edges of grassy marshes to flooded farm fields. If you can find one of these subtle sandpipers, give it a salute of respect for the 8000-mile journey it has undertaken, and wish it success in getting to the tundra on time.

Purple On The Rocks

From northern Ohio, Kenn writes: Okay, the name of the "Purple" Sandpiper is an exaggeration. The feathers just have a faint purple sheen when they're freshly molted, all right? But these birds are impressive for deeper reasons than just their color.

We were reminded of that during our day of birding the Lake Erie shoreline in blizzard conditions on Nov. 18. Kim already told you about our visit to Huron Harbor early in the day (see her post "Extreme Birding"). The highlight of the afternoon came at Headlands Beach State Park, east of Cleveland, where we found two Purple Sandpipers along the breakwater.

The Purple Sandpiper is an incredibly tough creature. Its nesting range straddles the Arctic Circle in eastern Canada, mostly in areas that few birders ever visit. It stays in that freezing Arctic climate until very late in the fall. Then it just comes south to the colder regions of the Atlantic Coast, where it spends the winter scrambling around on coastal rocks that are battered by the waves. On the map here, red is the normal summer range, dark blue is the normal winter range, pale blue is where winter stragglers are seen, gray is where migrants pass through. Notice how much of the winter range is up in Canada -- on the rocky edge of Newfoundland, where freezing spray coats the rocks in wind chills of 40 below zero. Notice also that Lake Erie isn’t on the normal route at all (the text that goes with this map mentions that this is a rare visitor on the Great Lakes). We were cold today while we were watching the birds, but I’ve never been warm while I was watching Purple Sandpipers.

Robert Hershberger spotted the birds first, ahead of us as we were making our way out along the huge jumbled rocks of the breakwater. We stalked them cautiously, but eventually we realized that they were coming toward us! Stunningly unconcerned about our presence, they kept coming closer until they were practically at our feet.


What remarkable birds these were! We could see every detail of their sleek plumage, their stout orange legs, their blunt orange-based bills. Clambering about on the rocks at the very edge of the water, they were sometimes wading belly-deep, sometimes submerged when another wave crashed against the breakwater. We were bundled up in as many layers as we could carry and we were still chilled through, stung by the sleet hitting our faces -- but these Purple Sandpipers, tough and beautiful, seemed oblivious to the freezing blasts. Another tough and beautiful creature, Kim, found that her camera batteries had died in the cold, so she walked back half a mile to the parking lot to get fresh batteries and then stood in the driving wind and sleet and snow to shoot the Purple Sandpipers. Conditions were challenging for photography (slanting lines of snowflakes cross all the images, and in some we can see sleet piling up on the backs of the birds), but Kim got her pictures.

Thinking about the extraordinary tameness of these birds, it occurred to me that they might not have had any prior experience of humans as something to be feared. They had come from a vast northern wilderness, and if they had come straight from the Arctic to this wild stretch of lakeshore, it was possible that we were the first humans they had ever seen.