post-breeding dispersal

There are at least two Spotted Sandpipers hanging around the pond -- an adult (with the spots) and a young one (spotless). The adult is probably a male as the females of this species leave the males to sit on the eggs and take care of the young while they (the females that is) move on to find another mate to fertilize their eggs and raise the young. However, the females will take care of the young that are produced by the last in a series of matings and it is (as far as I know) impossible to separate the sexes visually. Spotted Sandpipers nest in our area but I have never found the nest. They show up on Weesuck Creek and adjacent shores in mid to late July usually with young in tow but I doubt that they nest in this immediate area. So this seems to be an example of post-breeding dispersal.

Down at Tiana Beach in the late morning, I was struck by the number of Ring-billed Gulls in shining plumage that were working the gathering beach crowds. Nobody pays much attention to Ring-billed Gulls (often scorned as the 'fast-food' or 'parking-lot' gull). But at this time of the year they are at their finest with a rounded, dove-like head, snow-white plumage, inky-black wing tips usually with a small white spot at the tip, brilliant yellow legs and a yellow bill with a black ring; up close you can see a red gape and a red ring around the yellow eye. Ring-bills do not breed around here and they are actually uncommon during the spring and early summer. So the Ring-billed Gulls of mid and late summer are birds that have come here from their breeding grounds somewhere well to the northwest of here (the Great Lakes perhaps). But why are they so gorgeous looking? Are these breeding-age birds that have not gone through the breeding cycle (which would otherwise surely have left them looking less pristine)? Or are these second summer birds that have somehow just molted into top plumage before leaving the breeding grounds. In any case, we can expect to see a lot of them from now on (and they're really worth a second look). And it's yet another example of post-breeding dispersal.

Eric Salzman