BIRDS OF NANTUCKET
The Upland Sandpiper
by Kenneth Turner Blackshaw

Here is a bird that many people love, but almost no one sees any more. When I was learning my birds in the '50s it was called the Upland Plover. Before 1910, it was the Bartramian Sandpiper and in 1983, the 'powers that be' decided it was a sandpiper again based on the way its parts go together. When you see one pacing methodically, then pausing on a grassy field, you might think 'plover' though.

The good news is that even with all these changes to its common name, its scientific name Bartramia longicauda has remained constant, meaning, a 'Bartamian' with a long tail.

Bartramia sounds like a little known European country between Liechtenstein and Saarland but no, it's simply the Latinization of William Bartram's last name. The scientific genus, and until 1910, the species, were named in honor of this early naturalist who is known as the "grandfather" of American ornithology.

This title sent me scrambling to reference material to learn what it meant. Turns out that the "father" of American ornithology was Alexander Wilson and it was Mr. Bartram who got him started in the late 1700s. Wilson was a peer and competitor of John James Audubon and was the first to refer to this bird as "Bartram's Sandpiper."

You all know what sandpipers are like and are probably thinking of little clockwork toy-like beasties that run down the ocean beaches into the maw of the surf. An Upland Sandpiper is rather a different thing. It's 12 inches

from beak to tail but the neck is long and the head seems small on a bird this size. The color is speckled brown, tending to white underneath. The legs are long and yellow and the short yellow beak has a dark tip. The lighter coloring around the eye gives it a "deer in the headlights" look.

This bird used to nest commonly on Nantucket and Tuckernuck but they were gone by 1875. Griscom and Folger in "Birds of Nantucket" noted they were nesting again in the mid-1940s, but then they stopped. The last nest on the Vineyard was found in 1968, but there's still a single pair nesting over at Otis on the Cape. So what happened to this bird that was once so abundant?

In the 1800s a trade developed known as market hunting. These were professional hunters who hunted game that was then sold in the markets of growing towns. There was no regulation of hunting then so basically if something was edible, it would be shot.

The first species to gain the attention of these hunters was the Passenger Pigeon. This was a large migratory native pigeon that once was the most common bird in North America. It was estimated that there were five billion of them. Flocks were a mile across and 300 miles long, taking days to pass. They were also good eating. Passenger Pigeons were almost gone by the 1880s and the last of its kind, a female named Martha, died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914.

With the decline of one target, the hunters took aim on what was then known as the Upland Plover. Demand was strong, and the birds were shot and packed in barrels that were placed in special refrigerated rail cars out on the prairies to go back to the markets in Chicago. By the early 1900s they were almost gone.

To make matters worse, Upland Sandpipers fly 7,000 miles back and forth to the pampas of Argentina. They were shot there as well. Now shooting is regulated, but their food supply, grasshoppers, is subject to pesticide use so Upland Sandpipers are not recovering like one would hope. They are on the Massachusetts Endangered Species List.

To the west this bird is faring better. Where they do nest it is in tall grasslands. Often the first egg is simply laid in the grass and the remaining three eggs are added and the nest constructed around them at the same time. The major part of the nesting ground is west across the central U.S. and then northwest across Canada into Alaska. Most of the birds exit and enter the U.S. through Mexico but the few birds remaining in the east fly due south exiting through Florida and then across the Caribbean Islands where, unfortunately, they are still shot.

"Birding Nantucket" shows this species as rare from late April through May and then again from August to early October. Our single record this spring came from Vern Laux at the Linda Loring Nature Foundation, a bird he was lucky enough to flush that then flew off to the south, calling in the air. Vern is hoping to hear more of them in August when they migrate past in the early evening. Their whistled flight calls 'qui-di-di-du' are magic to the ear.

George C. West creates illustrations for these articles.

The Maria Mitchell Association sponsors bird walks on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 6:30 a.m. and Saturday mornings starting at 8 a.m., from the corner of Vestal and Milk streets. There is a fee for non-members.

To hear about rare birds, or to leave a bird report call the Massachusetts Audubon hot line at 1-781-259-8805.

Find more about Birding Nantucket on the web at http://k-blackshaw.com/BN/ BN.htm