This week, I feature the spotted sandpiper (Actitis macularius) for the first time ever in one of my columns. This is not because the bird is rare, but rather because the bird is elusive. It’s one of those birds that you can see again and again, but never get close enough to photograph successfully. I have several mediocre photos of this bird in my collection that just never quite made the cut (at least in my mind). That all changed a couple weeks ago, but I didn’t realize it until just last week. Before I tell that particular story, however, I’ll tell you something about this bird.
Unlike many of its relatives in the sandpiper family, the spotted sandpiper does not breed exclusively in the far northern sections of Canada. Thus, in the springtime when most other shorebirds are just passing through, the spotted sandpiper may actually set up shop anywhere from Connecticut, west to California and north through most of Canada and Alaska. The key habitat feature across this huge swath of North America is the combination of water and rock.
Spotted sandpipers prefer areas where lakes, ponds, streams and rivers have rocky shorelines. From personal experience, I can say that I have only ever seen these birds around areas with lots of open sky, so I wouldn’t spend too much time looking for one in the woods. Instead, look for these birds along the shores of the Deerfield River, or possibly Laurel Lake in the Erving State Forest. Another good location would be around the rocky shores of Turners Falls, but anywhere similar conditions can be found will do.
More likely than not (again from personal experience), you will see the bird only after it has seen you. It will alight from somewhere right in front of your face, it will skim the water while making peculiarly quick wingbeats and holding its wings oddly stiff, and then it will land. If you can see the bird from that point you will notice the rather humorous way that it bobs the rear half of its body up and down in an exaggerated manner, making you wonder how you could have missed it in the first place.
I have seen this species while walking, hiking, canoeing and kayaking. I have seen this species up close and far away, but whenever I had a camera the bird was either too far away to do me any good, or too fast for me to zero in on before flying away. Again and again, I was close, but never earned myself a cigar until two weeks ago.
I was sitting by a man-made dam. This was the sort of dam that was built in the 1930s by the CCC and the water flowing over it crashed down onto bare rock. I was paying a lot of attention to mallards and Canada geese when I happened to notice a much smaller bird approaching me. This bird was actually walking across the top of the dam where it would occasionally stop to winkle some small invertebrate out of its hiding place. Finally, after all of these years, a spotted sandpiper was walking toward me!
The bird was a juvenile, but it had the telltale field marks that helped me identify it. Yellow legs, brown wing feathers with fine scalloping and a white “notch” of feathers that headed up from the breast in front of the wing. Closer and closer it got until it finally reached its comfort zone, paused to give me a good hard look (perfect profile shot!) and then took off up the river on those stiff wings.
After sitting in that spot for over an hour, my legs had gotten stiff, so I stood up, stretched and noticed another spotted sandpiper below me at the base of the falls. Not quite as close as the other bird, it still posed for me and once again my investment in a big lens paid off. After 22 years of frustration, I had photos of juvenile and adult spotted sandpipers in less than half an hour. For the general bird enthusiast, a simple sighting should be enough. Unless, that is, you really love delayed gratification.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 23 years and this week he crossed another species off his “To Do” list. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.