19 May 2015 Stone Harbor Beach. NJ. This was a full day of birding and my notes spill over with really wonderful sightings, many of which should be or could be Bird of the Day. The notion of singling out just one as Bird of the Day is a very difficult on an adventure like this, but there’s a blog to write and so I’ll try. Setting aside glimpses of an Acadian Flycatcher Hooded Warbler and Yellow-Throated Warbler (all of which would be treasured sightings in Ontario) perhaps the birds that really took the biscuit were late in the day shorebirds, a pair of Purple Sandpipers.
We had an idea that walking the length of the wide, white gleaming beach of Stone Harbor would turn up a few new birds; we had Black Scoter and Northern Gannet in mind. Both of which would be distant sightings at best and we soon realized there’s far too much Atlantic Ocean out there and specks in the ocean haze are well, just specks; so neither of them made the day’s tally. But we encountered some Piping Plovers, little, scampering, sand-coloured shorebirds, a handful of American Oystercatchers and the pair of Purple Sandpipers.
Purple Sandpipers are a wonderful example of a species adaptation to and exploitation of a niche. They look like other sandpipers in that they are generally small to medium sized, mottled and spotty, on the long-legged side and certainly relatively long-billed. Most sandpipers live close to water where they feed by wandering around picking at invertebrates and other shoreline delicacies. Purple Sandpipers are no exception to the general rule, but have chosen to find their food in perhaps one of the most perilous and hair-raising of places, among the always wet, surf-splashed rocks and jetties of ocean shorelines. They spend their feeding hours scampering among rock crevices, skipping and dodging the battering of surging surf.
I’m certain they know all there is to know about staying one fluttering step ahead of the breaking waves, but I can’t help recalling how it was for me as a boy. I grew up on the south coast of England where scrambling over the sort of rocks that Purple Sandpipers would find good footing and easy pickings, was part of growing up. We went crab-fishing on shorelines like this, but on those slippery-as-ice, sea-weedy rocks ended the day with bruises, grazed shins and soaked feet. My poor mother!
Purple Sandpipers are not really purple; they are little darkish side and perhaps with some imagination have a purplish sheen, although I never saw it. But what I did see was a wonderful little creature that understood and exploited life on the edge. Bird of the Day despite almost too many contenders.