shorebird on the grass (but not alas)

Do you recognize this bird? Not a common species on Long Island and not an easy call. It can be found at this time of year in the sod farm fields around Riverhead and possibly further east. It usually arrives in late August or early September but is gone by mid- to late September. We were lucky to catch it.

The grassy environment is the clue. Much as I hate lawns -- almost always supplied these days by the sod farms -- these fields do sometimes reveal birds that are almost impossible to find anywhere else. Yes, this is a Buff-breasted Sandpiper, Tryngites or Calidris subruficollis, a species that was nearly shot out a century ago and is still something of a rarity. Oddly enough, with its mate, the Pectoral Sandpiper, it is the most common N. American shorebird vagrant to Europe. That is probably because it is a super long-distance migrant, breeding in the Arctic and migrating to the Pampas grasslands in southern South America where it winters; we catch it only briefly on the way.

Buff-breasted Sandpiper is one of the grassland shorebirds that we -- Eileen Schwin (who took the picture) and myself -- had hoped to find on a ride to the North Fork (some of the others are the aforementioned Pectoral Sandpiper, the Golden Plover and Baird's Sandpiper). But the only one we found was the Buff-breasted, a dozen or so birds (we actually counted 11) in a field north of Riverhead. The smallish dove-like head which bobs up and down as it walks in the grass, the shortish bill, the speckled back plumage and the light buffy front are the main field marks of this small shore bird.

Although we didn't find any other target birds, we made a stop at the North Fork Preserve where we saw Turkey Vulture, Red-tailed Hawk, several Redstarts and a calling White-eyed Vireo (more heard than seen).

Eric Salzman