Ferris Akel has edited and posted the best video from our live-streamed 
“Virtual Shorebird Walk” this past Saturday 5 September 2020. It is 1:06:38 in 
length, entitled “Knox-Marsellus Marsh With Dave Nutter, 9/5/2020 (HD),” and it 
can be found here:

https://youtu.be/V2tJiTlvabk

Featured shorebirds include: 

Stilt Sandpiper
Lesser Yellowlegs
Greater Yellowlegs
Semipalmated Sandpiper
Least Sandpiper
Pectoral Sandpiper
RED-NECKED PHALAROPE
Semipalmated Plover
Short-billed Dowitcher

Other birds shown include: 

Ring-billed Gull
Bonaparte’s Gull
Northern Shoveler
Green-winged Teal
Blue-winged Teal
Mallard 
Caspian Tern
Turkey Vulture
Sandhill Crane

Unfortunately, due to wind, much of the discussion was inaudible, so I am 
adding some commentary here. Weight references in grams are from the Sibley 
Guide to Birds, my favorite field guide. I think that overall body bulk is an 
easier way to compare shorebirds, whose length includes legs which are 
sometimes underwater, necks which are sometimes folded, and bills which may be 
under water or tucked among back feathers. Sibley is also handy because before 
each group of birds is a page showing all of the species grouped and labeled as 
to their Genus. I find this particularly useful to group our lanky Tringa 
(yellowlegs, etc) together at one extreme of shape and to group many of the 
compact Calidris (peeps, etc) in another extreme of shape.

RING-BILLED GULL, at 520g, is the smallest of our most common gulls, but among 
a resting group of them we saw a gull which was much smaller, a 190g 
BONAPARTE’S GULL, a bit larger than a nearby resting 160g GREATER YELLOWLEGS. 
Bonaparte’s Gull is most often seen during migration over or upon Cayuga Lake 
in mid-spring and mid-autumn. In breeding plumage the entire head of the 
Bonaparte’s Gull would be black, but in this non-breeding plumage it only has a 
round blackish ear-spot behind the eye, reminding me of a flounder with both 
eyes on the same side of its head. The other black it shows is on the wingtips 
when they are folded at rest, but unlike other gulls, such as Ring-billed and 
Herring, whose wings in flight also show big black tips, Bonaparte’s instead 
has a narrow black stripe along the trailing edge of the wing, and the ends of 
the primary feathers line up and overlap just right to make the wingtip look 
black at rest. The dark band across the folded wing indicates that this is an 
immature, rather than an adult, and in flight this would show as a diagonal 
dark stripe atop the inner wing. This bird also shows a bit of tan on the 
hind-neck remaining from the juvenile plumage. The bill of Bonaparte’s Gull is 
black and much more slender than the bills of larger gulls. Among gulls, the 
relative thickness of the bill is a good clue as to the bird’s size. The legs 
were pale pink, but this did not show in the video. Ferris noticed something 
while recording which I did not see at the time: the Bonaparte’s Gull was 
moving its feet while pecking at the water a bit, appearing to stir up the 
bottom and feed on small items in the water. Bonaparte’s is a small gull with 
buoyant flight, and it is similar to Black Terns in the way it will pick small 
items from the water surface or catch insects in flight. 

A 58g STILT SANDPIPER walked past the gulls while feeding with typical 
straight-down probing motions, and it was briefly in view at the same time as 
the 160g GREATER YELLOWLEGS and an 80g LESSER YELLOWLEGS. 

We then concentrated on a shorebird with a typical CALIDRIS genus shape: short 
legs, short neck, a bill about the length of the head (straight on this bird), 
a compact body whose wingtips and undertail coverts met relatively bluntly at 
the tail tip (no “wing extension” of wingtips far beyond the tail such as we 
saw a couple weeks ago on a Baird’s Sandpiper). The size was much smaller than 
a nearby LESSER YELLOWLEGS, making our study bird a classic “PEEP”. This bird 
was very pale and more grayish than brownish in tone with only a slight buffy 
wash on the head, indicating it to be a SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPER, and we saw many 
of this species, who, with partially webbed feet, are comfortable in shallow 
water. LEAST SANDPIPER, our other common, very small, and compact Calidris, 
would be darker brown above, with a brownish wash over the head, neck, and 
breast, and it prefers mud. Later we had a brief look at a Least Sandpiper. 

With the Semipalmated Sandpipers we saw a few PECTORAL SANDPIPERS, also typical 
CALIDRIS shape - compact body, short legs, fairly short neck, bill about the 
length of the head. But we could see that the Pectorals differed from 
Semipalmated Sandpipers in several respects: Pectorals are considerably larger; 
they are brown above; they have “braces” or pale stripes down the back; their 
neck and breast is washed gray-brown in a deep and well-defined convex shield 
(diagnostic); Pectoral shows a bit more neck; Pectoral’s head looks a bit 
smaller on the body, as is typical with larger birds; and the bill has a 
definite downward curve. In the absence of a direct size comparison, the shape 
clues of the smaller head, more definite neck, and more curved bill help 
distinguish Pectoral from the smaller but similarly-colored and -patterned 
Least Sandpiper (whose bill curvature is very slight, yet useful to distinguish 
from the straighter-billed Semipalmated). 

Among ducks, we saw two NORTHERN SHOVELERS, with a long, low profile and a 
distinctively long bill which flares out widely toward the tip. The FEMALE had 
a plain gray-brown face and uniform scaly tan sides, while the ECLIPSE MALE had 
darker speckles on the forward part of the face near the eye and bill (a hint 
of the breeding plumage green head) and darker brown feathers on the side (a 
hint of the breeding plumage chestnut patch across the belly and up both sides. 
They were briefly next to a GREEN-WINGED TEAL (a smaller compact duck with a 
distinct pale narrow horizontal triangle on the side of the tail) a MALLARD 
(larger, longer neck, silver on wing feathers atop back), and later a 
BLUE-WINGED TEAL (small duck with face paler toward the bill). 

A real highlight was watching two RED-NECKED PHALAROPES, in typical constant 
motion. As the phalaropes swam (or seamlessly transitioned to wading or walking 
when they briefly encountered shallows or narrow strips of mud) their heads 
pumped forward like a walking pigeon or a swimming American Coot. Phalarope 
toes are lobed somewhat like those of coots, allowing them to be the most 
aquatic of shorebird, even being found far out at sea during migration. Again 
in typical phalarope fashion, our birds frequently used their straight thin 
bills to rapidly pluck minuscule food items on the water’s surface in various 
directions. (We did not see any “spinning” when a floating phalarope combines 
rapid rotation with feeding. The turning pushes surface water away in all 
directions, creating an upwelling to bring tiny edible items to the surface, 
which the phalarope jabs out in all directions to pluck with its forceps bill 
while continuing to rotate. I guess surface food was already plentiful enough.) 
Their typical phalarope swimming posture was riding low in the water but with 
their necks extended up. They were larger than Semipalmated Sandpipers but 
smaller than Lesser Yellowlegs. These JUVENILE Red-necked Phalaropes were 
bright white except for a narrow black crown becoming an even narrower line 
down the nape, a black almost-horizontal mark on the cheek, and blackish back 
and wings with bold tan braces. We see breeding plumage Red-necked Phalaropes 
rarely in spring.

Among a flock of mostly SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPERS, see if you can pick out the 
SEMIPALMATED PLOVER which first caught Ferris’ attention. It is slightly larger 
than the sandpipers, and looks somewhat like a Killdeer with a plain tan back, 
and black, white, and tan bars across the breast, neck and head. But the 
Semipalmated Plover appears more CUTE than either a Killdeer or the sandpipers. 
That’s our human reaction to a bird with characteristics like a human infant: a 
big round head, a small bill(nose), no neck, a compact body, and short legs, 
and those traits are useful field marks, so it’s good to think about birds 
which trigger our “that’s so cute” response. The “SEMI-” in this plover’s name 
also reminds me that, although it has a very similar color and pattern to our 
most familiar plover, the Semipalmated Plover is by comparison the 
“half-Killdeer” - it’s about half the bulk at 45g v 95g; it has only one dark 
bar across the breast instead of two; its bill is only a quarter the length of 
the head instead of half; the tail is short instead of long; it shows no neck 
while Killdeer shows some; it is certainly less loud-mouthed than Charadrius 
vociferus; and it is less flashy, lacking the orange rump. Ferris also aptly 
compared the posture and behavior of the Semipalmated Plovers to the 
Black-bellied Plovers we saw last week: both stand with body horizontal and 
head horizontal, walk a few steps, then perhaps peck at the ground, and repeat. 
Black-bellied Plover, like Killdeer, being a larger bird, has a smaller head 
relative to body size, and it has more neck (held vertically), and also a 
larger bill (although still less than the head length), but for all of them the 
plover behavior stands (so to speak). The Calidris genus Least and Semipalmated 
Sandpipers which are smaller but close to the size of the Semipalmated Plover 
behave differently and tend to face downward while walking more constantly.

We watched a feeding DOWITCHER, whose bill, unlike Stilt Sandpiper, is straight 
and even longer, probing downward in deep water. For the Dowitcher, the bill’s 
propulsion is mainly from the neck while the body remains fairly steady and 
level, whereas the Stilt Sandpiper’s body tend to tip down in front and up in 
the rear as it sends its bill straight down. The Dowitcher’s body is also 
thicker than a Stilt Sandpiper’s. And at this time of year Stilt Sandpiper is 
gray above, but this Dowitcher is brown, which in fall indicates a JUVENILE. 
This juvenile Dowitcher is a warm brown on the patterned back which is scaled 
in paler feather edgings, and it is an especially warm tan on the breast, both 
of which identify it as a SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER. Discernible in the video if 
you look closely, is one diagnostic field mark which clinches the ID of 
SHORT-BILLED DOWITCHER on this juvenile bird: The tertials - the longest wing 
feathers which extend over the tail (and sometimes flutter in this strong 
breeze) - are barred orange and black. On a juvenile Long-billed Dowitcher the 
tertials would be solid gray with pale edgings. Long-billed Dowitcher would 
have a colder brown on the back with some orangish feather edgings, and a 
colder grayer color on the breast. Long-billed Dowitcher also has a thicker 
body, showing a deeper belly. Long-billed Dowitcher often shows a more 
pronounced hump on the back with hackles raised as it feeds, although I have 
seen this in Short-billed as well. 

It wasn’t until after we climbed back up to the overlook that we finally saw 
the family of SANDHILL CRANES walking on the drier central part of the marsh. 
To our delight they took flight together - the first time we had seen the 
youngster airborne - and they flew together up to the recently cut hayfield 
alongside East Road, for a wonderful closing view. 

- - Dave Nutter


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