PLATTE RIVER FLATS IN MAY

      On May 15 of this year, I brought up the mud flats and shallow braids of the Platte River in Audubon's Rowe Wildlife Sanctuary in southcentral Nebraska's prairie through their live camera and our computer screen.  Immediately, I saw a variety of north-bound shorebirds ( sandpipers and plovers) by the hundreds on the mud flats and in the slow-current shallows where they were catching and consuming invertebrates from the mud.  And I saw flocks of migrant tree swallows skimming swiftly among each other low over the water and flats in hot pursuit of flying insects to eat.  Obviously, there is no competition between shorebirds and swallows for food.  

     The water level of the Platte fluctuates often and dramatically, which keeps many mud flats bare of vegetation.  Bare flats suit the brown or gray shorebirds looking for food.  Well-camouflaged, sandpipers and plovers are not easily seen on the flats until they scamper across them, or take flight.

     Tight flocks of swiftly-flying shorebirds are entertaining and inspiring to watch.  Sweeping low over shallows and flats, every bird of a speeding group twists this way then that at once, showing all brown feathering, then white, then brown again.  Around and around the compact flocks race in erratic flight, then, suddenly, drop to the flats and water like peanuts tossed across those mediums.  They promptly disappear on the flats and water because of their feathering blending into those niches.  Their wild flights and camouflage help save them from peregrines and merlins who regularly prey on shorebirds.  A few times, I've seen peregrines attacking shorebirds.  

     I identified some of those migrant shorebird species on our computer screen.  Some of the small, brown sandpipers feeding on invertebrates in the mud were least, semi-palmated and pectoral sandpipers, and short-billed dowitchers.  A few dancing sandpipers were spotted sandpipers that bob as they walk along shorelines to get food.  That bouncing resembles bits of wood and debris bobbing in the current, which, I think, is a form of camouflage. 

     Long-legged, gray sandpipers were two kinds of yellowlegs that feed in the shallows and are camouflaged on the water.  I even saw a Wilson's phalarope spinning in the water to stir up tiny invertebrates to ingest.                 

     Ruddy turnstones and killdeer plovers trotted over the flats to pick up invertebrates from the surface of the mud.  The turnstones turned over leaves and bits of wood to seize invertebrates hiding under them.

     The tree swallows constantly swept among each other over the flats and shallows after flying insects.  They, too, are entertaining and inspiring to watch.  And as they twisted and turned to grab prey in their beaks, they alternately flashed their blue backs and white bellies.  When full of insects, gangs of them rested and digested on tree twigs.

     The shorebirds and tree swallows were both pushing north to nesting territories, many of the shorebird species to the treeless Arctic tundra and the swallows in Canada's woods around lakes.  But both those genuses of birds were entertaining and inspiring to watch when they were at Rowe Sanctuary along Nebraska's Platte River.      

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