OUR SHOREBIRDS

Royal Terns - photo courtesy Sharon Milligan
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There is a gathering of shorebirds and seabirds along our beaches which begins late in July and daily grows in numbers and species all through August and into the fall. Sandpipers, plovers, gulls and terns in mixed assemblage occupy the sand spits left by an ebbing tide, interrupting the horizontal line where sea and sand are joined.

Sanderlings run to and fro like wind-up toys after each receding wave, probing amidst the flotsam and jetsam for the riches of sea borne bounty. Plovers, appearing more nonchalant, idly pick and choose from the smorgasbord laid out along the sand flats. Every piling becomes a pedestal where pose the gulls and terns, living statues, more beautiful than any sculptured form.

They beckon us to come and explore the romance between birds and the sea, a provocative and fascinating exploration that rewards us with only brief glimpses of truths long sought.

From where do they come? Where are they going? What little understood forces of nature guide the flight of gull and tern over endless oceans, fog shrouded mercilessly by storms at sea.

Did the plovers and sandpipers nest somewhere in the mid-west, or along the Atlantic coast? They present us now with their young, mottled, speckled, nondescript editions of themselves.

And how went their nesting season? Did they find the simple requisites to successfully reproduce, or did they wander aimless and confused by landscapes that are ever-changing and less inviting? Did the terns find any deserted beaches, and if so, did some cruel frivolity of nature cause the tides to rise and cover and devastate entire colonies? Did unceasing rains pound upon them while they gathered their downy young beneath their sheltering bodies? Did Nature’s predators take a heavy toll of their numbers? Did the black skimmers abandon once again the shallow nests scooped in sand, where man’s curiosity afforded them so little of the privacy they needed?

Whatever happenstance that may have affected their attempts to reproduce, those who were successful and those who met with failure, come now to sojourn through the remaining days of summer, or perhaps to spend the winter on the coasts, spread out along countless miles of beaches from Florida to Texas.

So many of our shorebirds seem confusing, lacking the bright colors that make identification easy. But, if you begin at this time of year to acquaint yourself with the differences between gull and tern, sandpiper and plover, you can get to know them, one by one. The list of “possibles” is an enticement to any birder: Short-billed Dowitcher, Willet, Kildeer, Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Ruddy Turnstone, Piping Plover, Black-bellied Plover, Wilson's and semipalmated plovers, Dunlin, Sanderling, Least Sandpiper, Ring-billed Gull, Bonaparte’s Gull, and the terns, Caspian, Royal, Black, Gull-billed, Sandwich, Common, Forster’s, to name just a few.

Perhaps you will, as we did last August (editor’s note – this refers to 1975) be a fortunate witness to the rare sight of Noddy Terns on the United States Mainland, and become a lifetime devotee to the sport of birding.

This article was published in July 1976