It’s late Augusts and the fall migration is well underway.\u00a0 Where did the summer go?<\/p>\n
Migrations are tremendously expensive undertakings for birds.\u00a0 They must pack on fat to fuel each leg of their long journey.\u00a0 To see fall migratory birds, finding an abundant food source is a good strategy.\u00a0 Putting on fat quickly is an imperative for migrating birds so they know the best places to eat.<\/p>\n
My wife and I spend a lot of time in Lubec on Cobscook Bay.\u00a0 The area is a wonderful birding destination with lots of accessible conserved land.\u00a0 During the fall migration, my wife and I use the strategy of going to the food to find the birds.\u00a0 If you want to see diners, go to a restaurant.<\/p>\n
The South Lubec Sand Bar can be hopping with shorebirds and other water birds from August into October.\u00a0 This bar is about a mile long and is adjacent to an expansive sandflat along the South Lubec Road.\u00a0 This sandflat is the best restaurant in the area for sandpipers and plovers.<\/p>\n
Sandpipers forage by rapidly probing into the sediment, capturing invertebrates by feel.\u00a0 Their bills are well equipped with touch receptors.\u00a0 The sandpipers prey on small shrimp-like crustaceans called Corophium as well as polychaete worms, marine relatives of earthworms.\u00a0 These invertebrates are found in the lower to middle part of the intertidal zone.<\/p>\n
Plovers use a different feeding technique, relying more on their vision than their touch.\u00a0 A plover stands and looks for movement in the sediment. The plover then runs to that unsuspecting prey animal and captures the ragworm, bloodworm or other invertebrate.\u00a0 This form of feeding is called ambush predation or run-and-peck predation.<\/p>\n
The plovers and the sandpipers are dispersed broadly across the flat at low tide. Birding at this stage of the tide is fruitless.<\/p>\n
The trick is to let the rising tide bring the birds to you. As the tide starts to cover the productive part of the flat, the birds seem to redouble their feeding efforts as they are forced higher and higher in the intertidal zone.\u00a0 They congregate right along the rising tide line, seemingly oblivious of the humans staring at them.<\/p>\n
For an hour or so, large number of shorebirds will be congregated in a narrow swath, affording great views. Eventually, the tide will force the birds to higher ground. \u00a0The birds fly off to local fields or other open habitats and the show is over.<\/p>\n
I have found that arriving at the sand bar four hours before predicted high tide is optimal.\u00a0 The birds will start congregating within the next hour.\u00a0 By two hours before high tide, the birds will have gone to roost.<\/p>\n
Of course, it is possible to arrive at high tide and wait for the birds to return.\u00a0 I have had less success with this method as the birds seem to be more aware of human presence.<\/p>\n
We walked the sandbar recently with a group of friends. Diversity and numbers of birds varies from day to day.\u00a0 We had a corker of a day but not high bird diversity.\u00a0 We enjoyed stunning close-up views of many Least and Semipalmated Sandpipers. The Leasts with their reddish-brown upperparts and yellow-green legs are lovely birds.<\/p>\n
We had fun picking out the occasional White-rumped Sandpiper from the flocks.\u00a0 These birds are easy to identify in flight by their namesake white rump.\u00a0 On the ground, they are similar in color to the gray Semipalmated Sandpipers but a bit larger.\u00a0 The tail of a White-rump extends well beyond the folded wings, unlike the shorter tail of Semipalmated Sandpipers.<\/p>\n
A few Semipalmated Plovers and Greater Yellowlegs rounded out our list for the day. We often see a Merlin, Peregrine Falcon and even a Parasitic Jaeger hunting the shorebirds but not that day.<\/p>\n
Of course this technique of letting the tide bring the shorebirds to you works on any intertidal mudflat. Give it a try!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n\n
It’s late Augusts and the fall migration is well underway.\u00a0 Where did the summer go? Migrations are tremendously expensive undertakings for birds.\u00a0 They must pack on fat to fuel each leg of their long journey.\u00a0 To see fall migratory birds, finding an abundant food source is a good strategy.\u00a0 Putting on fat quickly is an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":146,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162219,23371,429],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/146"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/mainebirds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}