BIRDS OF NANTUCKET
THE SOLITARY SANDPIPER
by Kenneth Turner Blackshaw
Everyone knows sandpipers, the little clockwork toy creatures that tease the waves on the beach, running into the maw of the surf and then scampering back at the last moment. The ones you're thinking of are Sanderlings, tiny sandpipers, and just one of 85 species of sandpipers around the world. Our bird this week has the lonely name of Solitary Sandpiper and indeed you seldom see more than a few at a time.

Solitary Sandpiper

Alexander Wilson first described the Solitary back in 1813 but its habits were so obscure it remained a mystery bird for almost 100 years. In our bird books we find it on the same page with two similar sandpipers, the Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs. New birders get the idea it's just a smaller version of those two, only with dark gray legs, but in reality except for the general shape, it's quite different.

Solitaries are nicknamed the 'woodland tattler,' and you seldom see them on the beach with the other pipers. Rather, they are found around our inland pools, the Pout Ponds nestled in the hills of the Moors, or even around the rather unsavory permanent puddles of water near the landfill.

If you see a small sandpiper working the shore of one of Nantucket's ponds, look to see if its rear end is continually teetering up and down. If you see this, you've found one of the more common Spotted Sandpipers. By the way, don't look for spots in the fall. They are gone. But if the bird isn't bobbing, then look for the gray back, white belly, and the hint of white spectacles around the eye. Perhaps you have added a Solitary Sandpiper to your list. In flight their unstriped wings are as dark below as above. Their tails and rumps are horizontally barred with black.

One of the reasons this bird was such an enigma over the nineteenth century was that early observers confused them with another sandpiper with similar behavior and habitat preference - the Spotted Sandpiper. Spotted Sandpiper nests were found and assumed to belong to Solitaries. Solitary nesting behavior is so outlandish that scientists could scarcely believe what they finally observed.

In 1903 Evan Thomson, an early Canadian homesteader in the far north saw a sandpiper fly into a songbird's nest in a tamarack tree. He collected the eggs but it took another year before he could confirm the identification of the parents. He did this by shooting them, the standard practice for identifying a bird in that era.

Now we understand that this is where most Solitary Sandpipers raise their young. They seem to have no nest-building skills of their own. They seek out a previously used nest built by a songbird such as a grackle, blackbird, waxwing, robin, or jay, and make it their own. Usually they make no enhancements to the old nest at all other than reshaping it somewhat using the contours of their bodies as they brood their four eggs.

Like most shorebirds, they have precocious young, able to scamper about just hours after their birth. This borrowed nest is only used as an egg receptacle since the offspring leave home almost immediately. But that first step must be a Lulu! The good news is that most of the nests are not too high above the ground and also the mossy or boggy ground is a fairly friendly surface for these fluffy mites to bounce on.

On Nantucket we host these singular sandpipers as they migrate north in May and more commonly on their return trip in the autumn. They are most common in September when the chicks that have just hatched are making their first trip to the south. Like most sandpipers, the parents fatten up their young and then start their migration trip in August, leaving their chubby offspring to finish learning their flight skills and then make their first migration trip on their own.

With more birders on Nantucket, word travels

fast when these charming waders are found and any reasonably diligent bird watcher will probably have added them to their 'year' list by the end of September. They get scarce after that, most heading well into South America for the winter.

I had to travel to Jekyll Island, Georgia to get to study a Solitary Sandpiper in detail. There on a shady woodland pool, trees draped with Spanish moss, I sat and watched two Solitaries methodically patrolling the muddy edge, picking up small worms and tiny crustaceans. Hopefully you'll find your Solitary closer

to home. I

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles. If you enjoy 'social' birding, join the Nantucket Bird Club at 8 a.m. Sundays in front of Nantucket High School for a two to three hour birding trip. Call 228-1693 for more information. To hear about rare birds, or to leave a bird report call the Massachusetts Audubon hot line at 1-781-259-8805. Ask Ken a question at: kenandcindy1@comcast.net.