This week’s Bird of the Week, compliments of the Weminuche Audubon Society and Audubon Rockies, is the Baird’s sandpiper.
Shorebird migration is underway in our area, and it’s time to get out and find these amazing birds when they stop to fuel up on their long journeys to northern breeding grounds. Included among shorebirds is the family of birds known as sandpipers, a large and diverse group of species ranging in size from tiny to large.
Measuring between 5.5 and 7 inches, the Baird’s is one of the sandpipers lumped together as “peeps.” These are the species that are the smallest and often maddeningly difficult to identify. The tips of a Baird’s very long wings extend past the tail, its back is mottled brown and black, and its chest is streaky brown. Usually Baird’s display a horizontal posture and a gently drooping black bill.
Rather than its appearance, what makes this bird truly remarkable is where it’s going and where it’s been. The annual migration journeys of this small bird are among the longest and most rapid of all bird species. Many complete the 9,300-mile trip from the tip of South America to breeding grounds in the arctic in five weeks. In both spring and fall migrations, these sandpipers pass quickly through the center of North America.
Males arrive first on the breeding grounds when much of the arctic tundra is still covered in snow. Soon after their arrival where summer is short, females lay a clutch of eggs in drier habitats than the wet tundra favored by many shorebirds. Both adults assist in nest building, incubation and tending to young, but the female may depart even before the young fledge, leaving the male to finish rearing their young.
These sandpipers spend the winters in South America, often at high elevations in rather desolate cold and windy areas. Their preference for drier habitats than the wetlands where we are used to seeing shorebirds have earned them the nickname “grasspipers.”
It is difficult to imagine a more incredible feat than the one that long-distance migratory birds accomplish twice yearly between summer and winter homes.
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