by Doug Chickering
My attention was first captured by the movement of a few shorebirds in the worn, little shallows at the extreme south end of the pan area on Plum Island. Even though it was the approximate site of a very reliable Black-tailed Godwit some years ago, it isn’t usually the best place to look for shorebirds on the island. It was technically still spring; still early June, and although the shorebird population this year has been unusually strong in June, I wasn’t really expecting much. A Killdeer or a few Yellowlegs or maybe a Dowitcher; a late one on the way up, or an early one on the way back. What I found was something else again. First my binoculars fell upon a very familiar active form of a Phalarope, Wilson’s Phalarope to be exact. It was walking quickly among the muddy, low grass island, chasing after insects invisible to me. I knew that there were Phalaropes about but they don’t visit Plum Island that often and to see one in June seemed odd. Also in that little broken patch of water and grass I saw a much more expected Lesser Yellowlegs this one hopping gamely about on one leg. A bird probably doomed but still spirited and determined. There were a few peeps about, three or four Semipalmated Sandpipers; and another. Another that I couldn’t identify.
I have a lot of experience with shorebirds. I know that they can be confusing, but they have two characteristics that enhance one’s ability to make an accurate identification. For one thing you get to see a lot of them every year. Especially when you do the majority of your birding in the Newburyport and Plum Island area. For another thing they are easy to see. They feed and loaf out in the open; on sand bars or mud flats, or in the shallow pans that proliferate in the salt marshes. They aren’t taken to spooking easily and they seem to have a high tolerance for human presence. Over my long birding life I’ve seen thousands, probably hundred’s of thousands of them. The one before me now; on this nice June day had me stumped. I looked at this plain gray shorebird, and thought that it might be a Dunlin. But it was June. Dunlin shouldn’t look like this in June. Not only that but the bird didn’t seem chunky enough and was feeding very much like a Stilt Sandpiper. Perhaps it was a Stilt Sandpiper. A little early for a Stilt, but the slightly drooping bill seemed right and the plain gray mantle was okay. Okay for the end of September, maybe, but not June. There wasn’t even a trace of barring at the flanks. Most peculiar. The bird never wandered into water shallow enough to see its legs, and never flew; either event would be decisive in its identification. I even entertained the possibility that it might be something exotic, like a Curlew Sandpiper. But I was going to have definitive proof to make a call like that. Lois and I stayed for nearly an hour. The bird remained close and active; but I finally left uncertain about my final decision that it was probably a Stilt Sandpiper. Somebody took a picture of the bird and when presented to the cognoscenti it proved, apparently to be a first summer Dunlin. Or perhaps a Dunlin/Stilt Sandpiper hybrid. In any case it was beyond me.
So the first traces of summer have arrived. The shorebird season is beginning and already I have been served a valuable lesson in humility. I will see hundreds of Dunlin, in the days ahead; in all stages of molt and of all ages. I will see a score of Stilt Sandpipers I am sure, and someday I will see another Curlew Sandpiper. I am eagerly looking forward to those mornings spent in the New Blind, picking through the masses of peeps and others, searching the edge of a low tide in Newburyport harbor looking for the bulky form of a Hudsonian Godwit, and waiting for the fall specialties; the Buff-breasted Sandpiper, the Bairds Sandpiper to make their usual appearance. I am even looking forward to groping to identify a Long-billed Dowitcher and to be humiliated by mistaken identification. One of the attractions to birding is the uncertain nature of it all. You know you’ll make mistakes, but you also now that ahead is the thrill of a possible unexpected discovery.