THE SANDPIPERS 



(FAMILY SCOLOPACIDAE) 



BY A. A. ALLEN, PH.D. 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ORNITHOLOGY, CORNELL UNIVERSITY 



WHEN the waters in our lakes and ponds recede 

 during late summer and leave exposed great 

 areas of soft mud, they would become very un- 

 attractive were it not for the flocks of graceful little 

 birds that assemble upon them. With jerking heads or 

 tilting tails they trot along the soft oozy shore in search 

 of the larvae that lie concealed in the mud. These are 

 the sandpipers. There are tiny ones, smaller than spar- 



"SANDPEEPS" IN FLIGHT 



Least and Semipalmatcd Sandpipers showing the characteristic pointed 

 wings of the family. 



rows, and there are larger ones as big as pigeons, some- 

 times in separate flocks, sometimes all mingled together. 

 They are brownish or gray above and white below, with 

 slender legs and long slender bills, and except for their 

 size, all look much alike. It takes a sharp eye to dis- 

 tinguish the different species when they have assumed 

 their fall plumages. But it is in this plumage that we 

 see the most of them for on their way north in the spring, 

 the waters are high, mud flats are scarce, and they are 

 in a hurry to get to their nesting grounds. In their 

 breeding plumage many of the species are strikingly 

 marked with black or chestnut and are easily distin- 

 guished from one another, but in the fall they consti- 

 tute a post-graduate course in bird study that appeals 

 to those who have passed through the warblers and 

 the sparrows and the flycatchers and are ready for more 

 difficult problems. 



Together with the plovers, the avocets and stilts, the 

 turnstones, and the phalaropes, the sandpipers make up 

 the great group of shore-birds. The plovers have much 

 shorter bills than the sandpipers, the avocets and stilts, 

 much longer legs, the turnstones squarish bills, and the 



phalaropes, lobed toes, but they are all very similar in 

 general appearance. 



There are about 100 species of sandpipers, most of 

 them being confined, except on their migrations, to the 

 northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere, many of 

 them nesting within the Arctic Circle. Forty-five are 

 found in North America, some of them confined to the 

 West, some to the East, but the majority nest in the 

 far north and follow in their migrations the routes of 

 abundant food. Thus they are more common along 

 the sea coast than inland. 



They are great travellers, these sandpipers, perhaps 

 the greatest of all, some of them traversing the entire 

 length of both continents in their migrations. The 

 majority of species spend the summer on the barren 

 grounds of the far north and, in the fall, though some 

 of them stop on our Gulf Coast, many speed their way 

 across the Caribbean to northern South America and 

 some continue down the coast even to Chile and Pata- 

 gonia. When they leave their summer homes they 

 have stored up great layers of fat, but when they reach 

 their winter quarters, the majority have grown thin. 

 Particularly is this true of those that follow the route 

 of the golden plover on the long flight from Nova 

 Scotia to Venezuela or from Alaska to the Hawaii 



THEY MAKE THE SHORES ATTRACTIVE 



Stilt Sandpipers are feeding in a close flock at the right; a dowitcher, 

 yellow legs and Semipalmated Sandpipers are at the left, black terns 

 are in the background. 



Islands without a single stop. Twenty-five hundred 

 miles in a single flight seems almost incredible, but such 

 is the accepted belief today with regard to the plover 

 and other shorebirds that accompany it. Indeed they 

 have been seen passing over the Lesser Antilles as 

 though untired and continuing on to the main land of 



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