observed very minutely. Some of the few published reports on the
subject show a discrepancy in details, and one, giving an instance of
display by a bird proved by dissection to be a female, casts doubts
on all records of courtship based on sight identification and raises
the question as to the respective rôles played by the sexes in the
home-life of the species.
Bradford Torrey (1885), assuming the bird to be a male, speaks of
A spotted sandpiper, whose capers I amused myself with
watching, one day last June, on the shore of Saco Lake.
As I caught sight of him, he was straightening himself
up, with a pretty, self-conscious air, at the same time
spreading his white-edged tail, and calling, _tweet,
tweet, tweet_. Afterwards he got upon a log, where, with
head erect and wings thrown forward and downward, he ran
for a yard or two, calling as before. This trick seemed
especially to please him, and was several times repeated.
He ran rapidly, and with a comical prancing movement; but
nothing he did was half as laughable as the behavior of his
mate, who all this while dressed her feathers without once
deigning to look at her spouse’s performance.
Whittle (1922) describes a similar action of a bird observed in Montana
on May 29:
One of the birds, judged to be a male, was seen standing
on a long, inclined timber, while another, presumed to be
a female, fed close by along the shore. The male first
walked the length of the timber and then flew to another
one, where he depressed and spread his tail, and, without
teetering, stalked slowly along its entire length, with
head bent low.
Lewis O. Shelley (1925) reports from New Hampshire a courtship display
which differs from the two previous ones. Here again the respective
sexes are assumed:
A female sandpiper came running along the brook,
occasionally stopping to pick up an insect and teeter,
then run on again. Behind her were two males, the first
strutting along, looking much like a goose, craning his
neck up, swelling out his throat, drooping his wings, and
spreading his tail; the second kept well to the rear, and
did no strutting.
Every time the female stopped for a second, or slowed, the
male would dart past her and stop, throw his head higher,
and make a _fump, fump, fump_, in his throat. If that
failed to attract her attention, he would again pass her
and alternately spread wings and tail. This performance
went on all the afternoon, until almost dusk.
This observation describes a courtship in which the behavior of the
aggressive bird corresponds closely, especially in the movements of the
head, with the action of the bird noted in the next quotation--a bird
proved by dissection to be a female.
A. J. Van Rossem (1925) gives the following extract from Dr. Loye
Miller’s notebook:
Altitude, 9,000 feet; Mammoth Lakes, Inyo County, Calif.;
July 4, 1923: [spotted] sandpipers are just beginning to
pair, and several seen in courting flights. One especially
active bird was shot and proved to be a female. She came to
an imitation of the call--soared over a fallen log before
alighting on it. She then ruffed out the feathers and
strutted like a turkey cock, with head thrown back. The ova
were the size of buckshot.
_Nesting._--The breeding range of the spotted sandpiper, extending over
a vast area of diversified land, ranging in altitude from sea-level to
14,000 feet, and including both arid and well-watered country, makes
necessary in the bird a wide degree of adaptability in the choice of
its nesting site. Few birds show a greater variation in this respect
and among the places which the bird selects to lay its eggs there is
but one point in common--the proximity of water.
The following quotations bring out the extreme variety of nesting
sites: Mearns (1890) writing of the bird in Arizona says: “These birds
were apparently breeding at a small lake, in a crater-like depression
at the summit of a volcanic peak arising near the western base of the
San Francisco cone, the lake being at an altitude of from 10,000 to
10,500 feet.” Shick (1890) reports the bird in New Jersey as breeding
“in the higher parts of the island, generally on a sandy knoll in the
high, rank sedge grass,” and Audubon (1840), speaks of the nests “in
Labrador, where, in every instance, they were concealed under ledges of
rocks extending for several feet over them, so I probably should not
have observed them, had not the birds flown off as I was passing.” He
also speaks, quoting Nuttall, of “their eggs laid in a strawberry bed.”
Dwight (1893) records a nest “found in an odd situation at Tignish
[Prince Edward Island]. It was under a decayed log in a boggy slope,
and was carefully lined with bits of rotten wood.”
In the use of material to construct or line its nest the bird shows
nearly as much variation as in the choice of the nesting site and it
may be stated roughly that the more northerly the latitude of the
breeding ground, the bulkier is the nest. Audubon (1840) says, speaking
of the nests found in Labrador:
They were more bulky and more neatly constructed than any
that I have examined southward of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
* * * These nests [those in Labrador] were made of dry
moss, raised to the height of from 6 to 9 inches, and well
finished within with slender grasses and feathers of the
eider duck.
Brewster (1925) speaks of the bird as:
Especially given to breeding on small islands in Lake
Umbagog [Maine], scarce one of which is left untenanted
by them at the right season or resorted to by more than
a single pair. Their eggs, almost invariably four in
number, are usually laid during the last week of May, in
saucer-shaped hollows scraped in surface soil, and thinly
lined with dry grass. * * * If the island be treeless
and ledgy, the nest is likely to be on or near the most
elevated or central part, and more or less well concealed
by grass or other lowly vegetation. But if all the ground,
not subject to inundation, be densely wooded, the spot
where the bird has hidden her treasures is seldom far back
from the shore, and perhaps scarce above highwater mark,
usually where driftwood has accumulated, or beneath the
leafy branch of some outstanding alder or Cassandra bush.
In such places as these, it is by no means easy to find
the nest, even when the total area to be searched is only
a few rods square. The task may well seem hopeless if
undertaken in the open farming country about the southern
end of the Lake, for, although spotted sandpipers breed
here not uncommonly, they are so widely and sparsely
distributed over hilly pastures and fields of considerable
extent, that it is only by the merest chance that anybody
ever stumbles on a nest. The only one that I have happened
upon was well hidden in a tangle of withered grass and
ferns, covering a steeply sloping bank by the roadside.
In incubation as well as in courtship the male has been shown to
assume duties which are usually ascribed to the female. The following
quotation illustrates this fact. Van Rossem (1925) says:
On July 11, in a boggy meadow near the water’s edge, we
found a nest of four eggs which seemed nearly fresh. We
often had occasion to pass this nest, but there was never
more than one bird present. On July 25 the eggs had hatched
and after a short search we found the downy young in the
short grass. They were collected with the parent, which
proved to be the male. The sides of his breast and belly
were worn quite bare of feathers, showing that he had done
most of if not all of the incubating. The succeeding days,
we frequently passed the old nesting place, but never saw
any other sandpiper in the vicinity. On July 26 Alden
Miller and the writer were on the headwaters of the San
Joaquin River, in Madera County [California], and while
there found a nest on a grass-grown gravel bar in the
river. It contained young which were just emerging from
the shells. These were collected with the parent which, as
in the first case, was a male. We were at this nest and in
the immediate vicinity nearly an hour, but no other adult
appeared.
Although as a rule the spotted sandpiper does not build near the nest
of other birds of the same species, in exceptional cases many pairs
nest in close proximity to each other.
L. McI. Terrill (1911), illustrating this gregarious habit, says:
A few years ago a large colony were nesting on Isle Ronde
(a small island of a few acres, opposite the city of
Montreal). Visiting this island on May 26, 1896, I located
without difficulty 13 occupied nests. Again, on May 31,
1898, I examined upward of 25. On each occasion only a
small portion of the island was examined, and I estimated
that there were well over 100 pairs breeding.
Mousley (1916) points out that--
It may not be generally known that these birds if flushed
whilst constructing their nest invariably desert it, at
least this has been my experience on four occasions, when I
have flushed both birds whilst in the act of scooping out
or lining the hole. In one instance, however, they made a
fresh nest within 45 feet of the old one.
_Eggs._--[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The spotted sandpiper lays almost invariably
4 eggs, very rarely 5, and rarely only 3. These are ovate in shape,
less pyriform than the eggs of most waders, and they have only a
very slight gloss. The prevailing ground color is “cartridge buff,”
with some variations to “pinkish buff,” or “pale olive buff.” They
are irregularly spotted or blotched, usually both; sometimes they
are finely and evenly sprinkled with small spots; and very rarely
the markings are concentrated at the larger end. The markings are
mostly in very dark browns, “seal brown,” “clove brown,” and “blackish
brown,” and rarely as light as “Mars brown” or “russet.” The underlying
markings are generally lacking or inconspicuous, but some handsome eggs
are blotched with “lavender gray,” “pallid purple drab,” or “brownish
drab.” The measurements of 88 eggs, in the United States National
Museum, average 32 by 23 millimeters; the eggs showing the four
extremes measure =34= by =25=, =29= by 23, and 33 by =20= millimeters.]
_Young._--The young spotted sandpiper furnishes an instance of an
ancestral habit springing into action almost at the moment of hatching.
When no larger than the egg from which they have just stepped they run
over the sand teetering their tail in the manner of their parents.
My notes mention a little bird, no more than a tiny ball of fluff,
which stood on my hand waving up and down the feathery plumes of its
infinitesimal tail.
Wilson (1832) says: “The young, as soon as they are freed from the
shell, run about constantly wagging the tail,” and Nuttall (1834)
speaks of “the habit of balancing or wagging the tail, in which even
the young join as soon as they are fledged.”
Another example of the precociousness of the fledgling sandpiper is its
ability to swim while still in the down. G. M. Sutton (1925) speaks of
the habit thus:
Upon several occasions within the writer’s experience downy
young of the spotted sandpiper, when closely pursued, have
taken to the water, where they swam lightly although not
very rapidly in making an escape.
Dr. C. W. Townsend (1920) cites a case in which a young bird, evidently
in juvenal plumage, swam under water:
In Labrador I caught a nearly full-grown young still unable
to fly and put it in a small river. It at once dove and
swam under water for a distance of 3 or 4 feet, using for
propulsion its wings and probably its feet, although I
could not be sure of the latter point. It then rose to the
surface and swam to the opposite side like a little duck
and walked out on the sand, where the mother was anxiously
calling.
Aretas A. Saunders also mentions in his notes a case of diving:
Young birds when away from the parent and threatened with
danger often take to water and dive and swim under water,
using the wings to help swim. At such times the down is
covered with air bubbles, which helps keep them dry and
gives them a silvery appearance. Once I pursued a young
bird I wished to band, and it did this so many times that
it became wet in spite of the air bubbles, and in fact was
quite chilled through for a time.
More commonly the method of escaping danger adopted by the young
sandpipers is to lie motionless on the beach, where a pebbly shore
affords an ideal background for concealment. William Palmer (1909)
brings out the success of this ruse thus:
While walking along a beach one summer a spotted sandpiper
(_Actitis macularia_) and a single young were noticed some
distance ahead. As I approached the place the old bird,
with the startled manner characteristic of its kind at such
a time, kept well ahead, but I could not find the other.
Going back some distance, I waited and soon saw it again
with its parent. I repeated my quest, and again failed to
find the youngster. Going back once more and again seeing
it rejoin the old bird, I slowly moved forward, keeping my
eyes this time very intently on it, and soon picked it up
from the sand, an unwilling captive.
A. A. Saunders gives in his notes a picture of the parental care of the
young. The young birds are--
able to run and follow the parent when about half an hour
from the egg (two instances). The parent leads them away
and watches over them for a few days after hatching, after
which they gradually stray away from her (?) care. At
Flathead Lake [Montana] one bird hatched her young and
led them down the beach, and I followed to see what would
happen. When I got too near the mother (?) called _Peet!
peet! peet!_ in a loud, sharp call. The young immediately
flattened themselves down among the pebbles so effectually
I could only find one. I sat down on a log, and after
waiting some 20 minutes the parent quieted down--flew to
the opposite side of her young from me, turned and faced
them, and began to call _tootawee, tootawee, tootawee_
over and over. The young immediately responded and began a
hurried run for the mother (?), calling baby _peeps_ and
tumbling over the pebbles in their eagerness. The parent
half spread its wings as they arrived and they took shelter
beneath, just as chickens do under a hen.
The period of incubation is 15 days.
_Plumages._--[AUTHOR’S NOTE: The young spotted sandpiper in the natal
down is quite uniformly grizzled or mottled on the upper parts, from
crown to rump, with “buffy brown,” “wood brown,” grayish buff, and
black. The forehead is grayish buff, and the entire under parts are
white; a narrow black stripe extends from the bill through the eye
to the nape; a black patch in the center of the crown extends as an
indistinct median stripe down the nape and broadens to a black band
along the back to the rump.
The juvenal plumage comes in first on the mantle and wings, then on
the flanks, breast, and crown, and lastly on the neck, rump, and tail.
The upper parts are “light brownish olive,” more grayish on the sides
of the neck and chest; the scapulars and upper tail coverts have a
subterminal sepia bar and are tipped with pale buff or creamy white;
the lesser and median wing coverts are conspicuously barred with pale
buff and sepia; the chin, throat, and under parts are white.
During the fall, beginning late in August, or in September, some of
the body plumage, tail and some tertials and wing coverts are molted,
producing the first winter plumage. This postjuvenal molt is very
limited and very variable; I have seen birds in juvenal plumage as
late as December 3. The first winter plumage is like the adult winter,
except for the retained juvenal wing coverts. It is worn until March or
April. The wings are molted during the winter at any time from October
to April; and during March and April the body plumage is molted,
producing the first nuptial plumage. This is like the adult nuptial,
but there is more gray on the sides of the neck and less spotting on
the breast, sometimes very little of the latter. But the plumage is
practically adult, except for a few retained juvenal wing coverts.
Adults have a complete postnuptial molt beginning with the body plumage
in August, or earlier, and ending with the molt of the primaries at any
time from October to April. In winter plumage the upper parts are plain
“dark grayish olive,” shading off lighter on the sides of the head and
neck; the under parts are white, faintly washed with grayish on the
throat. The partial prenuptial molt, involving only the body plumage
comes in March and April and produces the spotted breast of the nuptial
plumage.]
_Food._--At the seacoast the spotted sandpiper searches for its food
both on the beach and on the muddy borders of creeks and inlets, wading
into the water, however, less frequently than most sandpipers; inland
it feeds along the margins of sandy ponds, sluggish meadow streams
and rushing mountain torrents; in farming country it strays into the
meadows, fields, and market gardens and finds in all these situations
food which it picks up from the low vegetation or from the ground.
Like some of the other sandpipers, however, and like several other
birds which have the agility to do so, it easily captures flying
insects even when they are on the wing. In order to come within
striking distance of an insect before it flies away, the spotted
sandpiper resorts to a ruse by which its approaching head and beak are
concealed or made inconspicuous. As the bird walks over windrows of
seaweed and such places where flies abound, it stretches its body out
with the bill pointing straight in front, the whole bird lengthened
into a line with the long axis parallel to the ground. In this position
the head, from the flies’ point of view is masked by the body as a
background and the bird is enabled to come so near that it can snap up
a fly, even after it has taken wing, by a straight forward movement of
the head. In stalking a flying prey the spotted sandpiper creeps up
to the fly, moving slowly with cat-like steps, the tail motionless,
and apparently never adopts the well-known trick of the semipalmated
sandpiper, the running about with the hind part of the body tilted far
upward, advancing upon a fly under cover of this as a screen.
A complete list of the insects which form the spotted sandpiper’s diet,
could one be compiled, would doubtless be a very long one, comprising
as it would both marine and land insects. The wide range of the bird’s
choice of food is shown by the following quotations which prove
definitely that it is a very beneficial species to the agriculturalist.
E. H. Forbush (1925), speaking of the bird’s habit of frequenting
cultivated fields, says:
They feed largely on locusts, grasshoppers and
caterpillars, such as cutworms, cabbage worms and army
worms, also beetles, grubs and other pests of cultivated
lands.
H. K. Job (1911) writes:
The usual food of most species of this class [shore birds]
is aquatic insect life of all sorts. This is in part the
diet of the spotted sandpiper. But as it is also a bird
of field and pasture, its range of insect food is very
wide, including grasshoppers and locusts. Probably almost
anything in the insect line is grist for its hopper, and it
is a most useful bird.
Austin H. Clark (1905_a_) furnishes the following unusual observation:
While on the island of St. Vincent, West Indies, last
October, I observed a number of our shore birds feeding on
the young of a small fish known as the “tri tri” (_Sicydium
plumieri_), which were at that time ascending the Richmond
River, near which I was staying, by thousands. The land
about the lower reaches of this river was laid completely
bare by the recent eruptions of the Soufrière, and in its
present state proves very attractive to all the species of
shore birds which visit the island during the migrations.
Those observed or proved by dissection to be eating the
young tri tri (which were at that time from half an inch to
an inch and a quarter long) were * * * solitary sandpipers
(_Helodromas solitarius_), and spotted sandpipers (_Actitis
macularia_). All but the last two kept near the mouth of
the river, or on the flat lands along its lower reaches;
the solitary sandpiper followed the stream up into what
were formerly arrowroot fields, half or three-quarters of a
mile from the sea, and the spotted sandpiper was found well
into the mountain forests.
W. H. Bergtold (1926) cites an instance of the bird’s catching another
swift-moving fish. He says that the caretakers at the Wigwam Fishing
Club, Colorado, “reported the spotted sandpiper as also catching trout
fry.”
The following quotation adds crickets to the list of insects; H. W.
Jewell (1909) writes:
While sitting on the banks of Sandy River one night I was
attracted to the actions of a spotted sandpiper. There
were lots of crickets on the shore of the river, and the
sandpiper would catch one in its bill, run up to the water,
and immerse the insect several times, then swallow it. This
seemed a very interesting performance to me, and I wondered
if all living insects caught are thus treated before they
are eaten. The cricket is quite a large insect, and as this
bird ate 10 or 12 he did not go to bed hungry that night.
Alexander Wetmore (1916), who examined the contents of nine stomachs,
says: “Though mole crickets (_Scapteriscus didactylos_) were found
in but two stomachs, they form 10.78 per cent of the total food.”
Summarizing his findings, he concludes, “From the foregoing the spotted
sandpiper is a beneficial species and should not be molested.”
_Behavior._--Nothing is more characteristic of the spotted sandpiper
than its flight. When it first starts from the shore the wings seem
to vibrate like a taut wire; then, as the bird gains headway, they
set and, depressed and quivering, they carry the bird slowly onward,
often swaying from side to side, close to the surface of the water. As
a rule, when startled, the sandpiper takes a semicircular course and
alights a short distance farther up the beach, and if followed either
takes another flight onward or doubles back as a kingfisher would do
under similar circumstances. This scaling flight, somewhat after the
manner of a meadow lark, is seen most commonly during the summer, but
on infrequent occasions the sandpiper lets go his wings and carries
them back with a long, free sweep and speeds through the air with the
rapidity of a swallow. The transition from one kind of flight to the
other is remarkable to see; with outstretched neck it drives along with
regular wing beats, a long, slender, unfamiliar-looking wader.
J. T. Nichols mentions in his notes this peculiar flight; he says:
One might be familiar with the bird for years and believe
it [the scaling flight] invariable. Careful attention in
late summer and fall, however, will demonstrate that it
is not. When, as rarely happens, the spotted sandpiper
rises to some height to make a considerable aerial passage
(especially over a stretch of marsh) the flight becomes
regular like that of a miniature yellowlegs, or swift and
darting as it sometimes is with a white-rumped sandpiper
for instance. It also, at times, flies low over the tops
of the marsh grass in this last named manner. To identify
such birds in the air is very difficult, and they will pass
for some one of the other sandpipers of rather small size
if one does not chance to appreciate the slenderer neck and
somewhat different shape, or the more uniform color of the
upper parts.
The ability to swim and dive which is so noticeable in the young of the
spotted sandpiper is even more remarkably evident in the behavior of
the adult bird. Of the many instances recorded in the literature, the
following will illustrate this well developed proclivity.
E. H. Forbush (1912) speaks thus of the action of a wounded bird:
In September, 1876, I saw a wounded bird of this species
when pursued, dive into deep water from the shore of the
Charles River and fly off under water, using its wings
somewhat as a bird would use them in the air. All its
plumage was covered with bubbles of air, which caught the
light until the bird appeared as if studded with sparkling
gems as it sped away into the depths of the dark river.
Later (1925) he adds a record of the bird actually running along the
bottom while entirely submerged. The spotted sandpiper--