It is a morning in late April, and I am heading down to Heron Pond, hoping to see a regular early spring visitor. Marsh marigolds are blooming, and great angelicas are poking through the muck at the pond’s edge. Skunk cabbages have been blooming for several weeks. As I reach the pond, I approach slowly, attempting to remain concealed behind some trees. And then I see it—the year’s first Solitary Sandpiper, feeding in the shallows. It bobs the back half of its body and trembles its tail (and probably feet) while it forages.
Adult Solitary Sandpiper with prey item during the spring (photo by Gary Shackelford).
The small ponds in woodland settings at Fair Meadows Sanctuary provide ideal stopover habitat for Solitary Sandpipers during the annual spring migration to their nesting grounds in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska and the fall migration to their wintering grounds in the Caribbean and Central and South America. Spring migration in Wisconsin extends from late April to late May; “fall” migration begins shortly after nesting is complete and extends from early July to early October.
The Solitary Sandpiper is aptly named. In contrast to the flocking behavior of most other migrating sandpipers, they seldom associate with other shorebirds during migration. They are usually seen alone or in the loose company of a few of their kind. The species was first described in 1813, but nearly a century passed before the first nest was found and their secret nesting habits were revealed.
That event is described in Arthur Cleveland Bent’s Life Histories of North American Shore Birds and in a well-researched article by C. Stuart Houston, a physician whom I was privileged to know. We practiced the same medical specialty—pediatric radiology—during our working years, and shortly after we first met, we discovered that we shared a passion for birds. In 1903, Evan Thomson, a Canadian homesteader and egg collector, saw a bird land on a tamarack on the edge of a bog and enter a nest. On inspection, he found an old American Robin nest containing four eggs. They were not robin’s egg blue but greenish-white in ground color with reddish-brown blotches. Thomson collected the eggs, but the identity of the bird was not established until the following year, when he found another nest and shot the parent bird.
Of the approximately 85 members of the Scolopacidae family (sandpipers and allies) worldwide, only the Solitary Sandpiper in the Americas and its counterpart elsewhere, the Green Sandpiper, routinely lay their eggs in abandoned tree nests of songbirds instead of on the ground. Nests can be found at any height in coniferous or deciduous trees.
Solitaries are medium-size sandpipers, falling midway between smaller “peeps” and the larger Lesser Yellowlegs. Although they are sometimes confused with yellowlegs, they can usually be easily distinguished by their combination of olive-gray back and wings with light spots or splotches, bold white eyering, and dull grayish-green or yellowish-green legs and feet. In flight, their dark rump and central tail feathers contrasting with boldly barred sides of the tail is striking. When seen flying overhead, dark wings and breast contrast strongly with a white belly. Their flight is graceful, and upon landing, they hold their wings straight up before slowly closing them. Additionally, their slow pace when wading contrasts with the animated style of yellowlegs.
The unstreaked, uniform brown wash on the head and upper breast and the smaller off-white spots on the back indicate that this is a juvenile Solitary Sandpiper during fall migration (photo by Gary Shackelford).
During migration, the Solitary Sandpiper is found along the edges of small, quiet freshwater pools or woodland ponds, where it forages for aquatic insects and small crustaceans. As it feeds in shallow water, it walks deliberately while constantly bobbing up and down. The bird commonly feeds in water up to its belly, where it moves vegetation by rapidly moving its tail or foot to rouse insects, catching them as they flee.
Written by Gary Shackelford, Fair Meadows Sanctuary resident manager
Cover image by Gary Shackelford. Two adult Solitary Sandpipers at Fair Meadows in the spring.
