NORTH-BOUND SHOREBIRDS ON FLOODED FIELDS

     Many north-bound shorebirds pass over coastal shorelines on their way to their nesting territories on the Arctic tundra.  And many of them land on beaches and salt marsh mud flats to rest and consume nutritious invertebrates before continuing on.

     Some shorebirds, however, migrate inland on their way to northern nesting habitats, including the tundra.  And some of them sweep down onto flooded, bare-ground fields in southeastern Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, after heavy or prolonged rain in April and May.  There they ingest invertebrates emerging from the soil to avoid drowning.  Several each of pectoral sandpipers and two kinds of yellowlegs sandpipers do so in April here, and least, semi-palmated and solitary sandpipers, and semi-palmated plovers do so in May.  These shorebirds bring a feel of coastal shorelines to those bare fields.

     To those handsome shorebirds, inundated, bare-ground farmland is like the vast tundra, beaches and mud flats they are already adapted to; natural habitats where they have traditionally found invertebrate food.  Bare, flooded fields are a new, built, habitat that hungry, migrant shorebirds exploit while migrating north.

     Each type of attractive shorebird has its own niche to procure food in inundated fields, thus reducing competition for food among its relatives.  And, allowing at least a few kinds of shorebirds at a flooded field to get food for the next lap of their migration north to raise young.    

     Long-legged yellowlegs, for example, wade into water deeper than their relatives can manage.  They probe their lengthy beaks into the water and muddy bottoms to snare invertebrates.  Their gray feathering blends them into the color of the water they wade in, making them hard to spot at times.

     Shorter-legged shorebirds are brown and dark-streaked.  They mostly hunt invertebrates in inch-deep water, or less, and the muddy shores of pools in fields, and are, therefore, camouflaged on that mud.  

     After resting and feeding for a few days in flooded, bare-ground fields, each shorebird continues its migration north.  I have always been thrilled and inspired to see shorebirds inland in April and May. They bring a flavor of the coast inland and it's remarkable to know how far they travel to raise a brood of youngsters.     

                      

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