The Teeter-Totter Piper

COURTESY KENNETH COLE SCHNEIDER
During our trip to the Finger Lakes a couple of weeks ago, we stayed in a cabin called Sandpiper 7, which made me feel like I was on a British science-fiction show from the 1970s. The whole group of cabins, yurts, and ancient Airstream campers was called Spotted Sandpiper. They were sprinkled through the woods on the typically steep slopes above Cayuga Lake. I visited the beach several times and looked for the eponymous shorebird, but I never did see one.

You can be forgiven for thinking, the first time you see a spotted sandpiper, that the bird is injured or inebriated (or both). As they make their way along the shores of freshwater lakes and streams, they pump their tails and hindquarters up and down so elaborately that they appear to stagger. If you have been primed by the balletic skittering of most shorebirds of similar size, like sanderlings, the goofy gait of this inland species may take you off guard.

Kevin McGowan wrote the entry for Acitis macularius in The Second Atlas of Breeding Birds in New York State (2008) and expressed concern for the status of this common bird. It has been in decline in New York and the rest of the Northeast for several decades and it is not clear why. It has a huge range, covering most of North America, and is not in danger overall.

McGowan notes the generality of its ecology: it is present wherever there is any kind of water body, whether it is an urban pond or a tundra pool. In New Hampshire it is found throughout the state from sea level to 3,000 feet, according to Sandra Turner in the state atlas. While McGowan did not speculate as to why the species is declining in the Northeast, Turner hazarded a guess: shoreline development is “adversely affecting availability and nesting success.” As the number one killer of wild birds is domestic cats, this is a fair guess.

A. macularius has reversed gender roles. It is the male who becomes “attached to the nest site” and “performs all parental care.” It has been found that the males have higher levels of the hormone prolactin, which stimulates parental behavior. Meanwhile the female initiates courtship, defends the territory, and will often mate with more than one male. Her courtship consists of an upward flight on stiffly held wings and then a descent to spread her tail feathers turkey-fashion in front of a male. The males are pushovers and breeding often takes place within minutes.

The nest itself is on the ground, a depression lined with grasses and mosses. But beyond those specifics this ecological generalist is known to put its nest in a variety of places. It is usually near water, but not always. It is often near an object (like a fallen log), but not always. They are usually solitary nesters, but not always.

As with many ground-nesting birds, the spotted sandpiper may carry out a “broken wing display” if you get too near its nest or fledglings. Turner notes that some pairs do not perform the display, apparently because there is too much entangling vegetation near the nest. It would not do to get caught while defending your nest.

If these sandpipers have to flee a predator, they are capable of swimming and even diving and running along the bottom in shallow water. Both adults and young are capable of this evasive action.

In keeping with their enormous range, spotted sandpipers eat almost anything in the way of terrestrial or aquatic invertebrates. Staple food items include midges and mayflies, house and stable flies, grasshoppers, crickets, and mole crickets, beetles, caterpillars, worms, mollusks and crustaceans, fish, tadpoles, and spiders. When food is scarce, selectivity decreases.

My encounters with this bird have usually consisted of surprising it as I made my way along a shoreline while I was looking for something else. When startled, it utters a weet, weet or peet, peet call (Sibley hears twii, twii) as it flies a short distance away with shallow, fluttering wing beats followed by a glide. In flight, the wings themselves are marked by a straight white bar at the base of the secondaries that extends into the middle of the primaries.

During the breeding season, they look oddly like a wood thrush, with a brown back and white undersides flecked with large dark spots. They are only 7.5 inches long, the same size as the thrush. But the sandpiper’s bill is the same length as the head and orange. Furthermore, the sandpiper has a prominent white stripe over the eye and a black line through the eye.

Outside of the breeding season, these are very nondescript birds, but they remain brown-backed while other small “peep” sandpipers turn gray and they retain a distinctive “notch” of white that extends up from their breast in front of the wings toward the back. They lose their distinctive spots, but they don’t stop teetering. Even the juveniles teeter soon after they are able to walk.

The Birds of New Hampshire notes A. macularius is “an early migrant, movement is evident by the second week of July” (which is perhaps why I didn’t find it along Cayuga Lake). Generally, by October they have migrated south out of the state. Some of them only go as far as the southern United States (where they are unknown in the breeding season), but others fly to South America, wintering on both the Caribbean and Pacific coasts, but also in the Andes as far south as Peru.

All this is set in motion by the shortening of days after the solstice. The birds begin to fatten up while prey is still abundant in mid-summer. Captive birds have been observed to grow restless in July and August when high-pressure fronts come through. I know the feeling.

Bill Chaisson has been a birdwatcher for over 50 years. He lives and works in Wilmot. Contact him at [email protected].