Part 3

Mr. Henderson tells me that he thinks he now understands the nesting habits of this species more thoroughly, for he has found five sets of eggs this season, 1927. He says:

The principal breeding place seems to be around small lakes or ponds in muskegs; and the bird they are chiefly associated with is the rusty blackbird, which also breeds among the same surroundings, and whose nests are as suitable for the solitary sandpiper as are those of the robin. A few breed around lakes and sloughs, away from the muskegs, but the main body is in the muskeg country associated with the rusty blackbird.

Eggs.--The solitary sandpiper lays almost invariably four eggs; I believe there is only one set of five recorded. They are ovate pyriform in shape, with a slight gloss, and the shell is very fragile. There are two distinct types of ground color, green and buff. These two types are well illustrated by the Rev. F. C. R. Jourdain (1907) in an excellent colored plate. In the green type the ground colors vary from “pale glaucous green,” or “pale turtle green,” to greenish white; and in the buff type, from “cream buff” to “cartridge buff.” They are rather thickly spotted and blotched with irregular markings, usually more thickly about the larger end, where the spots are sometimes confluent. The underlying spots and blotches in various shades of “purple drab” and “heliotrope gray” are often quite conspicuous. Over these the eggs are boldly marked with dark rich browns, “claret brown,” “liver brown,” “bay” and “chocolate,” or even darker colors where the pigment is thickest. One beautiful egg, figured by Mr. Jourdain (1907), has a “pale glaucous green” ground color, with only two blotches of very dark brown near the larger end, heavily splashed elsewhere with “pallid purple drab,” and sparingly peppered with light brown. The measurements of 68 eggs average 36 by 25.5 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure =38.5= by =27=, =33.7= by 23.8 and 36.1 by =23.6= millimeters.

Plumages.--I have never seen this species in natal down, but Ora W. Knight (1908) says that “the downy young are a general grayish buff above with darker suffusions on the back; a darker line through each eye from bill to nape; darkish crown line; below white with slight dusky suffusion on flanks.”

Young birds in juvenal plumage are grayish brown above, lighter and more olivaceous than in adults, and thickly spotted with white or buffy white; the sides of the head and neck are grayish, indistinctly streaked with dusky on the neck. A partial postjuvenal molt occurs in the fall producing a first winter plumage, in which young birds may be distinguished by retained juvenal wing coverts. Young birds are also more profusely spotted on the upper parts and less distinctly streaked on the neck and breast than adults. At the first prenuptial molt, the following spring, the young bird becomes practically adult.

Adults have a partial prenuptial molt, between February and May, involving the body plumage, the tail and some scapulars, wing coverts, and tertials. The complete postnuptial molt begins in July with the change of the body plumage and may last through September, but the primaries are not molted until the winter months, December to February. The winter plumage is similar to the nuptial, but the upper parts are grayer and less distinctly spotted; the neck and chest are only very indistinctly streaked with grayish.

Food.--Dr. Elliott Coues (1874) has described the feeding habits of solitary sandpipers so well that I can not do better than to quote his words, as follows:

They differ from most of their relatives in their choice of feeding grounds or of places where they usually alight to rest while migrating; a difference accompanied, I suppose, by a corresponding modification in diet. Their favorite resorts are the margins of small, stagnant pools, fringed with rank grass and weeds; the miry, tide-water ditches that intersect marshes; and the soft, oozy depressions in low meadows and water savannas. They frequent also the interior of woods not too thick and collect there about the rain puddles, the water of which is delayed in sinking by the matted layer of decaying leaves that covers the ground. After heavy rains I have seen them running about like grass plovers on open, level commons, covered only with short turf. They also have a fancy, shared by few birds except the titlarks, for the pools of liquid manure usually found in some out of the way place upon the thrifty farmer’s premises. They find abundant food in all these places, aquatic insects of all sorts, and especially their curious larvae, worms, grubs, and perhaps the smallest sorts of molluscs; with all these they also take into their gizzards a quantity of sand and gravel, to help along the grinding process. With food to be had in such plenty with little labor the birds become, particularly in the fall, extremely fat.

Edward H. Forbush (1912) says:

In the fall, on its return from the north, it has a habit of wading into the water in stagnant ditches or ponds, where it advances one foot at a time, and by rapidly moving the forward foot stirs up the vegetation at the bottom ever so slightly. This motion is so swift and delicate that the leg seems to be merely trembling, as if the bird were chilled by contact with the water, but it is done with intent to disturb insects among the algae at the bottom without roiling the water, and the eager bird, leaning forward, plunges in its bill and head, sometimes to the eyes, and catches the alarmed water insects as they dart away. I have watched this carefully with a glass while lying in the grass only 10 or 12 feet from the bird. It is easy by stirring the bottom slightly with a stick to cause a similar movement of the water insects, but I never could agitate it so delicately as to avoid clouding the water with sediment from the bottom.

Giraud (1844) says that “on the wing it is very active, and is sometimes seen darting after winged insects, which it is expert in catching.” Other observers have noted in its food various insects and their larvae, dragon-fly nymphs, water-scavenger beetles, water boatmen, grasshoppers, caterpillars, spiders, worms, small crustaceans, and small frogs.

Behavior.--The solitary sandpiper is always light, graceful, and dainty in all its movements. In spite of the unsavory places in which it often feeds, its trim figure is always neat and clean. In flight it is light and airy as it flits away for a short distance, only to alight again and lift its prettily lined wings high above its back before folding them. It flies higher than the spotted sandpiper and more swiftly, often in a zigzag manner, a trick probably learned by dodging branches in the woods, and the wings are raised well above the body on the upward stroke.

Walter H. Rich (1907) says:

There is scarcely another bird which flies with so little apparent effort. His strokes are slow and regular, a short sailing between each motion, but he moves very fast. Let him be alarmed and he will quicken his speed until he seems only a black streak in the air, and as he rises to top the surrounding trees it needs good and quick work with the gun to stop him.

It frequently indulges in a peculiar tilting and nodding habit, similar to that of the spotted sandpiper, but it is more deliberate and not so pronounced; it seems to be more of a bow than a tip-up more like the bobbing of the yellowlegs. It moves about rather sluggishly, wading in shallow water or even standing motionless, where its colors blend into its dark background and make it difficult to see. If it wades beyond its depth, it swims readily and can even dive to escape its enemies. John T. Nichols says in his notes:

In feeding it frequently lowers the head with a drilling motion, especially when immersing its bill in the water, apparently probing in the mud at such times, whereas as a rule our tattlers feed by snatching. It frequently stops to scratch its head with one foot. When bathing it ducks and splashes and sits in the water soaking, and at the conclusion of the bath, trips out onto the mud, raises the wings once or twice, and preens itself thoroughly. I have seen a solitary, alighted in a pool on the marsh, preening its feathers without dipping its bill in the water, and am not aware whether it has this bill-dipping habit common with some of its relatives.

Harrison F. Lewis has sent me the following notes on the rather peculiar behavior of a solitary sandpiper which he watched for some time:

The sandpiper, which was well aware that I was watching it, stepped slowly out onto the open surface of the mud of the bog, and, standing there with its left side toward me, repeated several times the following curious actions. It spread its wings about halfway, holding them stiffly in the plane of its back, neither raised nor lowered, so that the dark markings on its axillards were slightly visible. At the same time it drew its head as far backward and its tail as far forward over its back as possible, and slowly lowered its breast until it almost seemed to touch the mud. After remaining rigid in this position for 10 to 15 seconds, it would suddenly relax and become its normal self, only to repeat the entire procedure almost immediately. I could think of no purpose for these actions, unless they were an attempt at concealment by making the bird’s outlines and colors as unlike as possible to those normally to be expected in a sandpiper. Although it did not conceal itself from me by this means, it made itself appear extremely unlike a bird.

Solitary sandpipers are usually very tame and unsuspicious, often to the verge of stupidity, as the following incident, related by Doctor Coues (1874) well illustrates:

Once coming up to a fence that went past a little pool, and peeping through the slats, I saw eight tattlers of this species wading about in the shallow water, searching for food. I pulled trigger on one; the others set up a simultaneous outcry, and I expected them, of course, to fly off, but they presently quieted down and began feeding again. Without moving from my place, I fired three times more, killing a single bird at each discharge; still no effect upon the survivors, except as before. Then I climbed over the fence, and stood in full view of the four remaining birds; they merely flapped to the further side of the pool, and stood still looking at me, nodding away, as if agreed that the whole thing was very singular. I stood and deliberately loaded and fired three times more, taking one bird each time; and it was only as I was ramming another charge, that the sole surviving bird concluded to make off, which he did, I will add in justice to his wits, in a great hurry.

Mr. Brewster (1925) says:

Not less confiding than sluggish, they will usually allow a man to approach in the open to within less than a dozen yards, and sometimes he may almost lay his hands on young and inexperienced birds, while several of these may continue to gaze at him with obviously serene unconcern immediately after he has discharged his gun directly over their heads. There are times, however, especially in calm weather, when the report of a gun, or the sound of one’s paddle striking against the side of a boat, will instantly startle all the solitary sandpipers within 20 rods, causing them to rise on wing with loud outcries, and to fly off singly, in various directions, to more or less distant places. In summer and autumn they invariably act thus independently of one another when flushed, and also when engaged in feeding, although by no means averse to assembling rather numerously where food is especially plentiful or easily obtained.

Voice.--Mr. Nichols has described this very satisfactorily, in his notes, as follows:

The ordinary notes of the solitary sandpiper are very close to those of the spotted, but probably always differentiable. They are sharper, cleaner cut, less variable. The full-flight note is a sharp piping peep weep weep, more often three than two syllabled when a bird is definitely leaving a locality, or by wandering birds which ordinarily fly high. In birds flushed on, or making longer or shorter flights to different parts of the same marsh where they were living, the same note was usually double peep weep, rarely single.

A quite dissimilar call, less frequently heard, is a fine pit pit pit, or chi tit. This may have no significance other than being a reduction of the preceding, when the bird is less definitely on the wing, but seems to depend on their being another individual fairly close by. There is likely homology between it and the short flocking call of the lesser yellowlegs, and if correctly determined, a certain analogy thereto is also established, perhaps as much as possible with this non-social species. Of similar quality was a peculiar kikikiki from one of two birds in company which came to decoys nicely, as they went on past my rig without alighting.

A third kind of note, isolated pips, suggesting the call of the water thrush, is expressive of excitement when a bird is on the ground, as when just alighted.

Field marks.--The field characters are also well described by Mr. Nichols, as follows:

In flight the under surface of the solitary sandpiper’s wings appears blackish. Birds on the ground not infrequently raise the wings over the back, displaying this mark to advantage. Its tail, spread when about to alight, appears white with a contrasting dark center. When traveling in the air its flight is either swift and darting or else resembles that of a yellowlegs, a little jerkier. When about to alight it usually drops down abruptly, much as the Wilson’s snipe does; and when flying only a few yards it has a peculiar jerky flight with wings partially spread. On the ground it looks much like a yellowlegs, but is darker, smaller, and stands relatively lower. Its legs are olive green; very rarely an individual in spring has quite yellow legs.