It’s been a while since I urged you to tear a book apart. Let’s begin.
This is the peak of shorebird season. Approximately 30 shorebird species pass through Maine every fall. Some are rare, but most are expected if you look in the right places. For some species, the shore is not the place to look for shorebirds. It’s complicated.
The shorebird name refers to an entire family of birds in the order Charadriiformes. (I like to throw in a little Latin now and then to sound smarter.) There are over 150 Charadriiforme species in North America. It’s a good thing they’re not all here in Maine, because the identification challenge would drive most birders to take up a different hobby. Perhaps stamp-collecting.
Shorebirds range in size from the 5-inch least sandpiper to the 17-inch American oystercatcher. Both are in Maine right now. But some shorebirds wouldn’t be caught dead at the shore, including the American woodcock. Bird hunters pursue them each fall, although I’m told they taste like the earthworms they eat. I wouldn’t know.
Any time you come across a big bunch of similar birds you want to identify, a good shortcut is to separate them into piles. Rip the pages out of your favorite guidebook and begin sorting.
I’d start by discarding species that are so rare in Maine, there’s no point in confusing yourself. If a curlew sandpiper appears in your book, burn that page. I can’t recall more than two spotted in Maine over the past 20 years.
A Pacific golden-plover turned up in Wells this June, only the second verified sighting in Maine history. You don’t need that page. Nor will you require the ruff page. The ruff is a European shorebird with a wandering habit. Exactly one was seen in Maine last year.
Once you’ve reduced confusion by tearing out the nearly-impossible birds, the next sort I’d recommend is dividing the remaining Charadriiformes pages into two piles: birds typically spotted on mudflats, and all others. Besides the woodcock, a Wilson’s snipe won’t be foraging on an ocean mudflat. Upland sandpipers are restricted to uplands, primarily blueberry fields. Solitary sandpipers probe in freshwater mud, avoiding salt. Purple sandpipers avoid mud entirely, and only show up here in winter. Phalaropes are specialized shorebirds that breed in prairie potholes, then winter on open ocean.
Set this non-mudflat pile aside. These species bear little resemblance to each other, so they are pretty easy to figure out. Save your detail-oriented observation skills for the other pile, the mudflat birds.
Sort the mudflat pile by size into small, medium, and large shorebirds. The large ones don’t present much challenge. A few American oystercatcher pairs nest in our state, mostly in southern Maine. American avocets are about the same size, but don’t nest here. I’d claim that avocets are very rare in Maine, but then I’d have to explain how one turned up in Thomaston’s Weskeag Marsh last week.
The medium-size shorebirds would be easy, if not for a few troublesome pairs. Greater yellowlegs are larger than lesser yellowlegs, and you’ll have no trouble with identification if they stand next to each other. Both are gray with yellow legs, and the key feature to observe is the bill. The greater yellowlegs has a much longer bill — longer than the entire width of its head, and slightly upturned.
Bills don’t help you at all with the other troublesome pair. Short-billed dowitchers and long-billed dowitchers are nearly identical. Despite their names, both have very long bills. Long-billed dowitchers are a western species, but a few wander into Maine during fall migration. Nonetheless, if you see a dowitcher in Maine, you can be 99% confident it’s a short-billed. So why stress over identification?
The smallest shorebirds are the most troublesome, especially the so-called “peep” sandpipers. Least sandpipers are slightly smaller and browner with yellowish legs, as compared to the larger, grayer semipalmated sandpipers (our most common species) with dark legs. Western sandpipers are marginally larger than semipalmated, and a slight reddish color in the shoulders and crown is a telltale clue. The first two are numerous in Maine. Western sandpipers are seen only occasionally.
Plovers have shorter, thicker bills than sandpipers. The ones you’ll see all over Maine’s saltwater mudflats are semipalmated plovers. The federally threatened piping plover is identical in size, but much frostier in color. It prefers sandy beach habitat, mostly in southern Maine.
In conclusion: you didn’t actually tear pages out of your book, did you?
