Meadow sandpipers ... where's the sand?

[Shortsighted]

 Now that the spring warbler migration is drawing to its conclusion the shorebird migration is starting to build to its springtime crescendo.  OK, crescendo is overstating it.  Many shorebirds have already been reported close to the waterfront because that’s where the shore is usually located.  So far, Least sandpipers, Dunlin, Piping plover, Willet, Western sandpiper, and Spotted sandpiper, which are also found in swampy areas, like the Solitary sandpiper.  They avoid each other whenever possible.  It’s a Hatfield/McCoy kind of thing.

There is one sandpiper that takes Real Estate choices to an extreme and I’m not talking about the killdeer that should really be found in the woods because that is where the deer are located.  The Upland sandpiper lives up to its moniker, preferring meadows and grassy fields, reflecting its interpretation of an upscale neighbourhood.

I drove to that neighbourhood to have a look and was greeted with sandpiper calls, flashes of low-flying sandpipers that disappeared as soon as they landed in the tall grass.  Then it happened, two suspects approached the gravel road.  One flew across in an instant while the second lingered.  It wasn’t close but it hesitated just long enough to get an introductory photo.  What exquisite patterns on its breast, which are hard to focus on, perpetually seeming somehow blurred like the pectoral feathers of a Hermit thrush, also never fully seeming to be in critical focus.  Then, in a flash that sandpiper was gone.  I heard more of them squawking about family matters, occasionally relocating to sweeter grass.  Not sweetgrass, like the kind that you can braid and make into baskets if you have the requisite skills.  Just read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. This was plain old meadow grass, the kind favoured by ticks.  I may visit again when the ticks are distracted.




Upland sandpiper