author and lifelong birder
I have volunteered to assist with the protection of the Western snowy plover during their California coastal breeding season this year from March to September. The following is published to coincide with my training as a docent. This small shorebird is approximately the size of …
Here is the story of a species of bird that has flourished on continents where it was introduced during the 19th century while at the same time suffering serious decline in its native Europe. In North America, there were close to 200 million European starlings …
Across North America, there are about 50 native species of shorebirds, not including occasional rare visitors, and in Europe these birds are called “waders” because that is what they do. I first saw waders as a teenager at Spurn Point in the north of England during April 1961 when I recorded bar-tailed godwits, red knots, sanderlings, dunlins, redshanks, and a turnstone. Some of these same species or their relatives are now seen by me here in California. More about my adolescent bird watching is included my novel She Wore a Yellow Dress.
As you might expect, shorebirds populate the seashore and coastal and inland wetlands. They are represented by four families – sandpipers, plovers, oystercatchers, and avocets/stilts. Other birds that mix with shorebirds, such as waterfowl, seagulls, herons, and grebes are not part of this agenda.
The sandpiper family includes small birds (length 4.5 to 9 inches/11.5 to 23 cm) that are called sandpipers (nicknamed “peeps”), as well as many similar-sized to larger relatives, with names such as sanderling, dunlin, red knot, Wilson’s snipe, wandering tattler, dowitchers, surfbird, three species of phalarope, and ruddy and black turnstones. Wilson’s snipe and the American woodcock occupy inland marshes and forest thickets. There are also species of large sandpiper that include the long-billed curlew, whimbrel, several types of godwit, willet, and a bird with the title of yellowlegs.
Within California, a few shorebirds live year-round along the coast and on wetlands, but the population increases dramatically during fall when large numbers of shorebirds arrive or pass through on their way to wintering grounds elsewhere. They return to their northerly breeding sites in spring. The least sandpiper, the smallest shorebird in the world, and the slightly larger western sandpiper, are the common representatives here in California during fall and winter. Additionally, the Baird’s, spotted, stilt, and solitary sandpipers are regular visitors. and rarer varieties show up periodically such as the sharp-tailed sandpiper, buff-breasted, Terek, and upland varieties.
Most shorebirds arrive from mid-July to mid-November and leave for their breeding grounds during late March to mid-May. Deciding which species of sandpiper you are looking at can be difficult because many species replace their bright summer feathers with rather drab, similar-looking plumage during the fall and winter. To identify the six species of sandpiper most likely to be spotted in California, the following may help:
Least sandpiper
Western sandpiper
Baird’s sandpiper
Spotted sandpiper
Stilt sandpiper
Solitary sandpiper
The nickname of “peep” is used by ornithologists to describe this group of small sandpipers that utter a “peeping” call. Their call is a short, thin, and often high-pitched piping cry made during flight or when the birds are running along the sand or mud.
The ubiquitous ruddy turnstone, about 8 inches/20 cm in length, also belongs to the sandpiper family though its appearance is more like a plover. It has a short, dark bill that is slightly upturned at the end. Its similar-sized relative, the black turnstone, has a much more restricted range, and only winters along the rocky shores of the Pacific Coast. Both species have a distinctive white wing pattern that can be seen in flight. In Europe, the ruddy turnstone is simply called the turnstone since its cousin is not present.
Ruddy turnstone
Black turnstone
Ruddy turnstone in flight
In Europe, small sandpipers are called stints, and during the 1960s I would often watch little stints pass through Spurn Point during the fall, following their breeding season in the Arctic. During those early years, I also spotted greenshanks and redshanks belonging to the sandpiper family but they are not common in North America. If you want to know why I became a birdwatcher, read my novel Unplanned.
Little stint on Spurn wetlands
Easier to distinguish are the larger members of the sandpiper family. They typically possess long bills, some with a slight upward curve like godwits and yellowlegs, and others with bills curved down such as the long-billed curlew and whimbrel. In the case of the willet, the bill is long and straight. One of the most challenging identifications is distinguishing between willets and the similar sized sandpiper species known as the dowitchers. Two varieties of dowitcher can be seen, the long-billed and the short-billed. Willets are heavier, have plain gray-brown plumage with no markings underneath, and display a distinctive white wing-band in flight. Dowitchers are dull gray, some spotting or barring on the side of their flanks, a white eyebrow stripe, and sometimes can be distinguished by their method of feeding – they probe in the mud with a rapid up and down motion like that of a sewing machine needle.
Willet in the front, short-billed dowitcher behind
There is also the Wilson’s snipe, a member of the sandpiper family and the only species of snipe native to North America. It is typically a winter visitor in California, although a few do hang around the Central Valley for summer. They are secretive and coy shorebirds that use their coloring for camouflage. When flushed, they appear using a very rapid zigzag flight and utter a harsh cry.
Wilson’s snipe
Identification of shorebirds is further complicated by the plover family whose members can superficially look like sandpipers in winter, and forage in the same habitats. They are plump-breasted birds, about 6 to 12 inches/15 to 30 cm in length, with rounded heads and short, stubby bills. They can be distinguished by the color of their bill and legs, and often have a full or partial black collar or breast band. The species commonly found on the California coast are the snowy plover, semipalmated plover, the killdeer (named after its warning cry of “kill-de kill-de), and the black-bellied plover. There are also several infrequent winter visitors to California such as the lesser sand-plover, Pacific golden plover, and piping plover.
Unlike most other shorebirds, they forage by sight. After spotting their food, they run towards it, stop, and then catch it. Most other shorebirds probe and peck in the sand or mud using the sensitive tip at the end of their bills to locate their prey.
Snowy plover
Semipalmated plover
Killdeer
Black-bellied plover, winter plumage
Shorebirds belonging to the oystercatcher and avocet/stilt families are the least difficult to identify, as illustrated below. There are two species of oystercatcher in North America, both around 16 to 18 inches in length (40.5 to 45.5 cm). The American oystercatcher has black and white plumage and a distinctive long, bright orange bill, and is found on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, as well as along the shores of the Pacific. The black oystercatcher is found only along the Pacific coast, and both species are mainly permanent residents. In the UK, I would occasionally spot the European oystercatcher that is a separate species and has black and white plumage similar to the American oystercatcher.
American oystercatcher
Black oystercatcher
Finally, with regard to the avocet/stilt family, the American avocet and black-necked stilt are its representatives in North America.
American avocet winter plumage
My earliest effort with this bird family was to try and spot a European “pied” avocet during a visit to Minsmere Nature Reserve on the east coast of England during 1968. Unfortunately it was a failure, as I describe in Chapter 22 of my novel She Wore a Yellow Dress. At the time, the species had just returned to Britain after 100 years of absence, attracted by new habitat created through the intentional flooding of the shoreline that occurred during World War Two to defend Britain against a possible German attack. It is now well-established in Britain and has become the symbol of conservation success, being used as the emblem for the British Society for the Protection of Birds.
Black-necked stilt
Unfortunately, it would take too long to describe every species of shorebird in North America and Europe, and how to identify each one. Instead, I will provide a general guide for identifying shorebirds, and will end the paper by introducing you to my favorite of all shorebirds, the black-necked stilt.
First, let me digress and feature the marbled and the bar-tailed godwits, two species of large sandpiper that are fairly easy to identify. They have a long, slightly upturned bill and long pointed wings that enable them to migrate non-stop thousands of miles each year. They are named after the call they make.
Marbled godwits are regular visitors to California in winter, arriving after breeding on the Great Plains. They are medium-sized and often can be seen congregating in small flocks on coastal mudflats and along estuaries. Some will continue onwards as far south as Mexico and the Caribbean. They can be identified by their mottled cinnamon and black coloring on their upper parts, and the rusty cinnamon plumage that is displayed during flight. They look a little like whimbrels but extend their feet beyond their tail feathers during flight.
It is this species’ cousin, the bar-tailed godwit that holds the record for the longest non-stop flight of any bird. A few years ago, several of these birds were tracked traveling from New Zealand to the Yellow Sea, making the unbroken journey in nine days, a distance of 6,800 miles (11,000 km). They then carried on to Alaska. Others have been tracked flying from Alaska to southern Australia, a distance of 6,900 miles, in ten days. Although breeding in Alaska, the bar-tailed godwit typically crosses the Pacific for the winter rather than traveling south down the West Coast of the Pacific. Thus they are only rare vagrants in California, with most sightings in the north of the state.
In Europe, the species breed in the Scandinavian Arctic and Siberia, and hundreds of thousands pass through the UK on their way south, with an estimated 40,000 stopping to winter in Britain, especially along river estuaries such as the Thames, Humber, Dee, and Forth. As I mentioned earlier, I was fortunate to see this bird traveling past Spurn Point.
North American marbled godwit
Marbled godwit – Migration map
Bar-tailed godwit – Alaska/Eurasia
Bar-tailed godwit – Migration map
Godwits are an example of how size, physical features and call help with a bird’s identification, but this often does not help with smaller shorebirds, especially during non-breeding.
For example, the dunlin, a medium-sized, chunky sandpiper, with a length of about 8.5 inches/22 cm and slightly smaller than an American robin, has a distinctive black belly and a vivid mottled rusty back during spring and summer, but for the rest of the year it molts into a mousy gray-brown and the black stomach patch disappears. In profile, it is round-backed and hunched, has a medium-length drooped bill, and forages using its bill like the needle of a sewing machine (similar to dowitchers).
Dunlin – spring/summer plumage
Dunlin in winter
You will find recording bill length and curvature to be very helpful for many shorebirds, and leg color will also helps identify some species. For example, greater and lesser yellowlegs have long legs that are colored bright yellow, oystercatchers possess pale pink legs, and avocets stand on long, spindly blue/gray ones.
If you see the bird in flight, try to see if it has any form of white wing stripe like a willet, turnstone, sanderling, or oystercatcher. Similarly, some species exhibit a white rump.
Another important method is noting the bird’s behavior. How does it feed? Does it run and grab its food like a plover, walk steadily and keep its head down like small sandpipers, or rapidly peck in the mud as if its bill is a sewing machine needle like dowitchers and dunlins? Flocks of sanderling forage on the beach rather than mudflats, and they can be seen chasing the waves backwards and forwards to find food within the narrow inter-tidal band.
Sanderlings
Bird calls are also distinctive. Does the bird whistle like a plover, oystercatcher, or dowitcher, or do they call loudly like a yellowlegs? Maybe it chips and peeps like many small sandpipers?
Finally, look at the habitat in which you see the bird. Oystercatchers, turnstones, tattlers, and surfbirds prefer intertidal rocky seashores. Others, like sanderlings and some plovers prefer the beach. Several types of plover, such as the killdeer, forage in grassy areas, whereas many sandpipers rely on intertidal mudflats, estuaries, and pond edges; several species choose to forage in shallow water like avocets, dowitchers, and yellowlegs, and salt-loving phalaropes spend time at sea or on saltwater lakes such as Mono Lake in California.
These ways of differentiating may seem complex, but if you study a bird carefully you can usually come up with a satisfactory identification. Consider using the checklist below:
Now let me shift to the black-necked stilt to illustrate how the above guide can work. It is a species named after its black and white plumage and the long, thin, pale pink legs. Also, it is the only stilt native to North America, and became a favorite of mine because there is nothing like it in the UK. It is small, about 14 inches/36 cm in length, has an unusually long neck for a shorebird, and walks slowly and deliberately as it forages for food. Its bill is black and needle-like, and its call is a distinctive and loud “yap” or “keek”, often given in a series when alarmed. The species is fairly abundant in wetlands and coastal areas of California, and using the above guide, I would summarize the stilts I see on the Corte Madera Creek as follows:
Black-necked stilt
Black-necked stilts at Corte Madera Creek, CA
Since the mid-1960s, the global population of black-necked stilts has remained fairly constant, although in California the numbers have been impacted by a substantial loss of natural wetlands. Of the stilts that breed in California, 70 percent nest in the Sacramento Valley.
Black-necked stilts are their most noisy during the breeding season and adopt different methods to frighten away potential predators. One is known as the “popcorn display” where several adults circle a potential predator, and jump, hop, and flap their wings, calling loudly to frighten the threat away. There is also the “false incubation” when the adult crouches as if incubating eggs and then moves on to another spot to repeat the process. Finally there is the “broken wing” distraction when the bird feigns injury to persuade the predator to follow it.
Most definitely, the black-necked stilt is my bird of the month.
Shorebirds in general have managed to preserve robust populations, in part because so many breed on the northern Arctic tundra. However, that appears to be under threat because of habitat deterioration and increased nest predation. Climate change is interfering with food and nest availability, such as early summer cold spells, and shifts in animal population is causing a higher proportion of egg and chick losses. More research needs to be done to develop appropriate conservation actions.
One of my favorite species of birds is the surf scoter, a sea duck that is abundant during October through April along the North American west coast as far south as central Baja (Mexico), after breeding in the boreal forests and tundra of Alaska. It …
In chapter 5 of She Wore a Yellow Dress, I describe my first date back in 1965 with a fellow Hull University undergraduate who became my wife. She curiously asked about my favorite hobby, and when I said it was bird watching, she wanted the …
One of the very few families of birds that remained constant when I moved from England to California in 1979 was the family of terns. I regularly saw Sandwich, Arctic, common, black, and little terns during my visits to Spurn Point in Yorkshire, and during 1971 I made a pilgrimage to Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland to see Sandwich, Arctic and common terns nesting. The latter is detailed in chapter 29 of my novel She Wore a Yellow Dress. They were extremely rare around my home town of York although passage Arctic terns occasionally showed up. Most members of this family are long distance migrants, moving between the northern and southern hemispheres when the seasons change. When I moved to California, sandwich, arctic and black terns were still present, the little tern was renamed the least tern, and new members included the Caspian, elegant, royal, and Forster’s terns.
Related to seagulls, terns are classified under the bird family, Laridae, and although similar in appearance to gulls, they have long swept-back wings and forked tail. They are usually identified by their deep rowing flight pattern and quick turns and hovering in pursuit of fish. They can dive vertically into the water from 20 to 50 feet (6 to 15 meters). Additionally, terns have straight, sharply-pointed bills, whereas gulls possess a more hooked one.
Sandwich terns
Worldwide, there are close to 40 species of terns, usually colored black and white, although in most cases, more white than black. To the casual beach goer they may look alike. The best way to distinguish between species is to note their size, the color of their bill (red, orange, yellow, or black), the existence or otherwise of blackish wing tips, and the length of their tail streamers. Additionally, the elegant, royal and Sandwich terns display a ragged crest on the back of their heads, especially noticeable during the breeding season.
Most importantly, terns are known for the great distances they travel, especially the Arctic tern that breeds during summer in the Arctic and migrates south for winter to Antarctica. They each can travel around 25,000 miles (40,000 km) annually, gliding as well as flying, usually out at sea, and taking around 40 days for a one-way migration.
Arctic tern migration map
During my years living in Northern California, I have watched the fishing antics of the common tern, the Forster’s tern, the Caspian tern, and the elegant tern. Some varieties breed locally and others, like the common tern, are visitors during migration. The one species of tern that eluded me for many years was the least tern, the smallest of all terns, about the size of a large songbird. They breed in small numbers in the San Francisco Bay Area, but because of their endangered status, they are subject to close protection.
Least tern
Least tern Range Map: orange – breeding; blue – non-breeding
The least tern is distinguished by a distinct white patch on its forehead, interrupting its otherwise solid black cap, and in summer has a yellow bill with a black tip, and yellow feet. It usually flies low over the water with quick deep wing beats and a hunched-over look, and shrill cries of “kellick” or “kip-kip-kip”, often heard just before it is seen plunging into the water after its prey. The species nests in colonies, usually around 25 pair per colony, scratches out a “scrape” in sand or gravel on the beach, and lays three green eggs blotched with brown.
Next and eggs of least tern
So you can imagine my excitement when, at the start of August 2021, while on vacation in San Diego County, I discovered that least terns were nesting only a few miles away, close to the Mexican border, under the protection of the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Reserve. It was a dull, cool, Friday morning as I and my friend drove south for about 30 minutes, before arriving at Imperial Beach, where we quickly located the Reserve’s Headquarters. We were greeted warmly and offered abundant advice. Immediately, I was told that Bewick’s wrens, scrub jays, dark-eyed juncos, bushtits, song sparrows and Anna’s hummingbirds had been seen close to the Reserve’s building that morning. However, we were soon on our way across the marsh to see what we could see, along with the accompaniment of the sound of helicopters from the nearby helicopter base. In the distance was Tijuana, and the US – Mexico border wall, undulating along the hills and eventually running down to the beach and into the Pacific Ocean.
Tijuana Wildlife Reserve
Almost immediately there were juvenile black-crowned night herons waiting to catch fish, and black phoebes fluttering in search of insects. Other bird species we recorded during our walk were the American kestrel, northern harrier, marbled godwit, cliff swallows, northern mockingbird and a Forster’s tern fishing in the tidal lagoon, but no sighting of a least tern.
Forster’s tern
The warden commiserated with us back in headquarters, and told us to visit the beach to the south of the town. At first we encountered several groups of large, stocky shorebirds, called willets, searching for food at the water’s edge, and could see several types of terns fishing out at sea, mainly elegant terns and one large Caspian tern.
However, just when we were about to give up on our search, we heard overhead the cry of “kip-kip-kip”, as two least terns passed us by. They are closely related to the Old World little tern, but are treated as a separate species based on voice difference. I had achieved the purpose of our journey.
Willet
As for the fate of terns, their numbers and enormous range offers them some security although for several species their numbers have dropped. They suffer loss of habitat from development and disturbance and from predators. Longer time, climate change presents a major threat. The Arctic tern that follows the summer season between hemispheres is at risk of losing up to 50 percent of its natural habitat due to global warming.
This is a memoir of a COVID-invigorated Bird Spotter and his July 2021 journey from Half Moon Bay to the pinnacles of the Southeast Farallon Islands, and waters beyond, in search of pelagic birds: puffins, shearwaters, storm-petrels, and albatross. My thanks go to Alvaro Jaramillo …
For thousands of years, domesticated pigeons have been an integral part of human life. Egyptian hieroglyphics and stone carvings in Mesopotamia (now modern Iraq) indicate that these birds were domesticated at least 5,000 years ago. Over centuries they have been kept as symbols of prosperity, …
It was the summer of 1954 when my childhood hobby of birds’ egg collecting came to an end. The British government implemented the Protection of Birds Act, 1954 that forbid me to take wild birds’ eggs, and at the same time, protected adults and their nests from human interference. The United States had many years earlier, in 1918, introduced similar legislation through its Migratory Bird Treaty Act that applied to approximately 1100 species, but which excluded non-native types such as house sparrows, European starlings, and pigeons.
Where I lived, up until the mid-1950s, it was normal to go “bird nesting” and gather the eggs you found to build up your egg collection. I never thought about the consequences on bird populations. Even after it was illegal, I refused to throw away my assortment of eggs. More about my egg collecting habits can be found in my two novels Unplanned and She Wore a Yellow Dress.
With these strict new controls, you would have expected bird populations to boom, but this has not always been the case. The reasons are complicated and below I try to describe some of the important aspects of avian demographics. At the end of this paper, I illustrate the decline using the European skylark and North America bobolink.
A. Background data
B. The skylark and the bobolink
Two examples of bird species under serious threat are the Eurasian skylark and the American bobolink (named for its bubbling “Bob O’Lincoln” song). The species are not related. The bobolink is a member of the blackbird family and the skylark belongs to the lark group of birds; only its cousin, the horned lark, is native to North America. Both species rely on grassland and farmland, which are the habitats in North America that have suferred the greatest loss of bird population during the past 50 years, with a 53 percent decline and a reduction of half a billion birds.
Both species symbolize the countryside’s return of summer. Males deliver a bubbly, metallic song, often fluttering high above the fields, as they look for mates. Their melody has been associated with joy, freedom and enthusiasm, and has inspired poets such as Emily Dickinson, Shelley, Tennyson and Wordsworth. Both species nest on the ground, but that is where the similarities end.
Their appearance is distinctively different as the illustrations below show.
The bobolink migrates between southern Canada and the northern states to southern South America twice a year, a return journey of approximately 12,500 miles (20,000 km). In contrast, skylarks generally do not migrate. However, the two species are known to appear in each other’s territory and both are suffering serious declines in their native habitat.
Skylarks, while still common in the UK with a population of about 1.7 million, are calculated to have experienced a population decline of around 75 percent since the early 1970s. The switch in agriculture from spring to fall sown cereals has interfered with the birds’ food supply; the move from hay to silage has caused nests to be destroyed by machinery due to earlier harvesting; and on grasslands, intensified stock grazing exposes nests to trampling and makes them more accessible to predators. Efforts to reverse this trend are underway and include more organic farming, providing incentives for sowing spring crops, and implementing standards to prevent nest destruction. Indications at the present time are that these steps are stabilizing the population of skylarks
The plight of the bobolink is similar that of the skylark, with its population having declined around 65 percent since 1970. Even so, it is fairly common, with a breeding population of around eight million, of which 28 percent breed in Canada and 72 percent in the United States. Habitat destruction is the main cause for their loss of breeding territory, and it has to contend with dangerous pesticides in its wintering locations and is often treated as an agricultural pest. While on migration, it is hunted as food in places such as Jamaica.
Efforts are underway to control these interferences, with bans on dangerous pesticides, encouraging working farms to establish additional grassland, maintaining larger fields that apparently are preferred by the bobolink, and probably, most important of all, incentivizing farmers to mow hay fields outside the breeding season.
During the 1950s and 1960s, as a young birder in the north of England, I ignored the rather common, drab and inconspicuous-looking birds known as house sparrows and tree sparrows. Both are Old World species, distributed across Europe and Asia, and rarely migrate significant distances. …
Blue-crowned mot mot The first resplendent quetzal I ever saw was on April 5, 1998 in the Monteverde Cloud Forest, Costa Rica. The species is considered by many to represent the most beautiful bird in the world, and although it was partially obscured by …
Growing up in Yorkshire, I called them waterhens (now more usually known as moorhens). They are humble birds, preferring freshwater wetlands, and are sedentary, except that they are joined by birds moving from north-west Europe to winter in the UK. As their name implies, they are the size and shape of a chicken, they “cluck” like a hen, and lay a similar number of eggs. As a child, I sat on the edge of ponds and talked to the birds as they sat incubating their eggs on bulky platforms of reed stems. Usually there were 6 to 10 eggs in the nest, one laid each day, but occasionally the number was as high as 15 to 20, a sign that cooperative breeding was taking place. My novel Unplanned gives you a sense of why I connected so closely with these birds.
Common moorhen nest and eggs
When they were disturbed, the sitting bird would quietly slip off the nest and disappear into the bulrushes. The dark brown plumage on their back and wings, and the bluish-black feathers on their belly made it difficult to see them among the vegetation or afloat on the dark-colored water. I would try to spot their chunky bright red bill with its citrus-yellow tip, or look for the white stripes on the flank. As soon as I left, I knew the waterhen would return to its nest. They are mainly sedentary birds, rarely leaving their territory, although you could see them poking around on land during winter when the ponds froze over.
Some of my ornithological experts called them moorhens even though the last place you would find them would be on the moors. It turns out that the word “moor” is derived from the old English word “mere”, which in turn gives rise to the word “marsh”. This made sense since I occasionally visited Hornsea Mere, a large expanse of freshwater near the south-east coast of Yorkshire, where I would see many moorhens.
Common moorhen Range Map
When I moved to the California in 1979 I thought I was still seeing moorhens, but was told that they were common gallinules, apparently the Latin word for “small hen”. To me they looked the same. They walked on floating vegetation and behaved secretively, just like the ones I knew back home. However, after much debate, they were declared a separate subspecies. Apparently they “cluck” differently from moorhens, and there are slight morphological differences affecting their red truncated frontal shield. The species inhabits the southern US, central America, and a large part of South America, and is just one of the birds I discovered in California where they use a different name from the one used in Europe.
Apparently, this North America bird also has a relative on the Hawaiian Islands of O’ahu and Kaua’i, known as the ‘Alae ’Ula (burnt forehead). Legend has it that the bird brought the fire from the volcano to the gods of the Hawaiian people, but during the flight the bird’s white forehead was scorched red by the volcano’s fire.
Common gallinule Range Map
I later discovered this “same-bird, different-name” phenomenon applies to other species in North America. For example:
Other species of chickadee are unique to North America, except for the gray-headed chickadee which is called the Siberian tit throughout its domicile in northern Eurasia.
But back to moorhens and gallinules. There is another relative in the United States known as the purple gallinule that inhabits freshwater swamps and marshes in the southeastern states of the US. They have brilliant purple, blue, and green feathers, and while I have not seen one in California, they have a reputation for vagrancy, with individuals traveling as far west as here, and all the way down to the Galapagos Islands.
Whether they are called moorhens or gallinules, all these birds remain common and widespread, and generally are not at risk from climate change and other interventions, although loss of habitat is a general threat. In the UK, however, the moorhen is on the Amber conservation list because of its population decline during the 1970s and 1980s, and the current reduced clutch sizes during breeding, which possibly indicates a higher level of predator interference.
Purple gallinule
Meet the Eurasian common cuckoo bird and the North American brown-headed cowbird, both brood parasites. As a boy many years ago in northern England, I pursued a little brown bird called a hedge sparrow, flicking its tail and shuffling through dense bramble undergrowth and …
Eurasian/common teal bird (male) The first Eurasian or common teal I ever saw was a flock flying south over the sea at Spurn Point, Yorkshire, in England, during the early 1960s, presumably on their way to their wintering grounds around the Mediterranean. Spurn Point …
As a small wader and member of the plover family of birds, the dotterel is known for its friendly, sweet and trusting behavior towards humans. Consequently, it was hunted for sport, was easily caught, eaten by royalty as a delicacy during English Tudor times, and its brightly-colored feathers were used for fishing lures. Today, in Britain, it receives the highest conservation priority on the UK Red List of most endangered species.
I have never seen one of these medium-sized birds, or at least I have never been able to identify one. Many years ago, I and a friend watched a bird that flew like a plover and displayed the characteristic run-stop-and tilt-forward feeding behavior of species belonging to this bird family, but it did not display the usual plumage we associated with plovers. It was almost certainly a dotterel since I had already seen the more typical types of plover in Britain. I simply scribbled a note describing our sighting but took no further action. In my novel She Wore a Yellow Dress I describe some of my other bird watching disappointments. For example, I failed to see a peregrine falcon during a 1966 outing in Essex (chapter 12).
You can imagine dotterels running among the heath and grass of upland Scotland where today some 500 males incubate and rear their young? They nest on high, dry tundra. The female often ends the relationship with the male once the eggs are laid, leaving the male to take care of the offspring, and sometimes flies off as far away as Norway or Finland to find a new mate.
Dotterel nesting
Dotterels display a colorful plumage, especially during the breeding season, when their reddish/chestnut-colored underparts are at their brightest. Their back is streaked grey and a warm brown, they have a black belly, and possess a broad white eye stripe and white band around their neck. The bill is short and the legs are yellow. They also appear along the British coasts during the spring and autumn migrations as they move between northern Europe and North Africa and the Middle East.
Dotterel Range Map: orange – breeding; blue – wintering
There are very few left breeding in Britain. A population decrease of nearly 60 percent has occurred during the past 30 years due to global warming. Breeding ranges have retreated up hill and the birds’ nesting pattern has altered because of vegetation change and a reduction in snow cover. With a longer season for vegetation growth, some nesting areas have been lost to long grass, and the early disappearance of snow that reduces the availability of insects lessens the areas where the dotterel can feed. Currently, the species nests in parts of Scotland and on occasion in the English Lake District. Not surprisingly, the Scottish Gaelic name for the dotterel translates into “the fool of the moors”.
Killdeer
You only find dotterels in North America as a casual visitor, although a few do make the journey from Siberia to Alaska, and nest in the west of the state. The first recorded sighting in California of a dotterel was on the Farallon Islands, off San Francisco, in September 1974, and every few years additional sightings are reported, including at Point Reyes only a few miles from where I live. So maybe one day I can add this species to my Life List of birds, but in the meantime I accept the abundant and perky, noisy killdeer, as the substitute.
My final comment has to do with climate change. It is not just the dotterel that is affected, but birds generally, and in particular those that migrate. British birds arrive on average 9 days earlier than in the past and are slowly pushing their range northwards. American robins arrive in the Rockies two weeks earlier and before worms and other food are available for their offspring. Some non-migratory birds such as the British great tit nests too late to make use of the abundant caterpillars that emerge earlier because of warmer winters. Plants leaf sooner, that in turn causes leaf-eating larvae to hatch sooner. Rising temperatures, flooding, drought, wildfires, and sea level changes are all affecting the traditional habitat of birds and interfering with their food supplies.
