How Many Marbled Godwits are @ Cupsogue

I changed this morning's SoFo walk from Shinnecock Inlet to Cupsogue because of MARBLED GODWITS and Marbled Godwits there were aplenty. As we were walking out on the strand opposite the big spoil island at the north boundary of the main Cupsogue marsh no less than FIVE Marbled Godwits came sweeping in on a rising tide, landing right in front of us. The opportunity to see these birds close-up was extraordinary. Godwits are huge sandpipers (are there any bigger?) with two-toned upturned bills and a rusty coloration that is especially striking when the bird is in flight. They had to share the beach with several rather hostile Willets, numbers of smaller shore birds (Short-billed Dowitchers, Semipalmated Sandpipers, Semipalmated Plovers and Sandpipers, Ruddy Turnstones, Sanderlings) and many terns (mostly young and old Common Terns). This was not an entirely peaceable bit of sharing as squabbles erupted between the godwits and willets and among the godwits themselves. Godwits in fight mode use a bouncing, hopping, flighty style of attack-and-avoid (see John Heidegger's photo below). These little squabbles are however quickly settled without injury (those long upturned bills look too fragile to function as serious weapons).

Terns were everywhere -- mostly Commons with young birds in numbers hovering over the incoming water tumbling into one of the inlets in the marsh. Fish were coming in with the tide affording tern neophytess with an opportunity to hone their fishing skills. I even saw Willets catching what looked like young flatfish.

The overlook at Pike's Beach was our second stop. This miniature parklet, in the Village of Westhampton Dunes, overlooks a sand island that was being fast flooded by the rushing incoming tide; it looked like a rush hour subway car packed with commuter birds including no less than four more Marbled Godwits as well as D-c Cormorants and a couple of dozen Royal Terns. This island is perhaps a mile east of Cupsogue and I suspect that these Godwits were not four of the five birds seen earlier. So perhaps there are as many as nine Marbled Godwits in the area!

There were plenty of other birds at both sites: Black Skimmers (including some in juvenile plumage), Common, Forster's, Roseate, Least and Royal Terns, various shore birds including Greater Yellowlegs, a few Red Knots and a possible Western Willet. There were Osprey, Saltmarsh, Seaside and Song Sparrows, Yellow Warbler, Willow Flycatcher (feeding young; we could hear the chipping call of the young bird), Eastern Kingbird and at least one N. Flicker in the dune vegetation surrounding the marsh. Some Barn Swallows and a very few Tree Swallows were moving along the beach.

We returned via Dune Road on Shinnecock where the rising tide was flooding the road. A flooded grassy meadow on the south side of the road held numbers of Least Sandpipers, Lesser Yellowlegs and, notably, Pectoral Sandpipers -- perhaps as many as a dozen of them popping in and out of the grass.

Eric Salzman