I donned my camo gear the other day in hopes of shooting ducks. I know it’s not the season, but I was headed to a nearby wooded swamp in hopes of photographing either wood ducks or hooded mergansers, preferably both. As usual, other things caught my eye and the attention of my long lens.
The setting was nearly ideal. It was the day after our one-day heat wave last Friday, powered by a relentless south wind and that rush of warmth had brought a massive wave of birds of all kinds to the North Country after a somewhat delinquent spring. I found a reasonably comfortable perch on the beaver dam that had turned this once-marginally upland forest within the Lost Lake SNA into a heavily wooded wetland, the kind of habitat that pulls in birds like a magnet. And I wasn’t needed anywhere else, so I could sit and take it all in.
The cool morning air that day seemed alive with birds, as wave after wave of warblers made their way through the woods. First-of-the-season birds were singing all around me, from least flycatchers to kingbirds to common yellowthroats. There were ducks there, too, a couple woodies, mallards, and a handful of mergansers. I even caught sight of a green-winged teal, a bird I hadn’t seen in years, making its way through the trees. They were all just too far away to capture the kind of images I was looking for.
The best thing about these little ventures, however, is that something always seems to make itself a highlight. This morning it was the solitary sandpiper that dropped out of the sky and nearly into my lap.
While their name suggests that sandpipers are birds of the sandy shores of large lakes or the oceans, that’s not universally true, and the solitary sandpiper is probably the best example of a sandpiper that walks to the beat of a different drum.
I should mention that this species should not be confused with the spotted sandpiper, which can be found bobbing along the shores of virtually every lake in the North Country.
The solitary sandpipers are considerably less common and they are less dependent on wetland habitats than most other sandpipers. They certainly do feed in wetlands, and this wooded beaver swamp was pretty much ideal feeding territory for this particular bird, which was taking a pit stop from its northward migration.
They hunt for their food mostly by sight and eat everything from aquatic insects, to snails, to small amphibians. If wetland habitats are scarce, however, these sandpipers are perfectly able to hunt in upland habitats, scrounging for insects under leaves or even on vegetation.
These sandpipers are probably most unique because of their nesting strategy. While most sandpipers and other “shorebirds” nest on the ground, solitary sandpipers are the lone exception, opting instead to nest in trees in the taiga stretching from Labrador to Alaska. They don’t build their own nests— instead, they recycle last year’s versions from species like Canada jays and even robins. The males search for usable nests, but it’s apparently the female who makes the final selection. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
According to Cornell University’s All About Birds website, male solitary sandpipers establish a territory around their nest site and will display by rising slowly a few yards into the air on quivering wings, spreading their tails and singing, then slowly descending to the same place.
While most sandpipers like to migrate and feed in flocks, as their name suggests solitary sandpipers prefer their own company. They may tolerate a mate during the breeding season, but the rest of the year they live on their own and have been observed even chasing their own kind away if they end up in the same proximity. This bird is certainly well-named.
The bird I watched this weekend spent nearly an hour feeding near me, sometimes no more than ten feet away. It spent most of its time hunting along partially submerged logs in the swamp, watching for spiders, aquatic insects, or tadpoles within easy reach in the water. While I had seen solitary sandpipers before, it was the most time I had ever spent observing one, without it being aware of my presence.
That’s the best part about spending time in the woods in camo. In most of our encounters with wildlife, we see them reacting to the presence of a human. In camo, we get to see them where and how they live in nature, when we humans aren’t around.