Retracing the sandpiper’s path

The Kenduskeag is a beautiful stream, and the woods along it are full of birds in spring, summer and fall.

As a child, I played on its banks and watched the spotted sandpiper in summer. I also saw painted turtles, snapping turtles, muskrats, woodchucks and eels.

Just for old times sake, I recently took an October walk through the woods to the Kenduskeag Stream, walked upstream and went back up through the woods again. The stream looked beautiful with bedrock on its banks and boulders in the stream, green grass close to the stream and trees higher up the banks.

And an old friend from childhood was hopping from rock to rock – a spotted sandpiper. Actually, it was many generations from the ones I saw as a child, but it still looked the same, teetering up and down as it walked in the shallow water on the edge of the stream.

The female spotted sandpiper has an interesting life in spring. She holds a territory and displays to the male, sometimes to several males. She lays her spotted eggs in a nest on the ground, hidden in an area of low vegetation. The male incubates the eggs and looks after the downy young. The female flies upstream, finds another territory and a male and starts another family.

Most sandpiper species nest in the Arctic, but the spotted sandpiper nests right in the Bangor area, along the edges of streams and lakes. The downy young are beautifully camouflaged and are about the size of a walnut. They teeter up and down, just as their parents do.

I have often wondered why spotted sandpipers teeter up and down. I have not seen any literature in field ornithology that addresses the function of teetering. I believe that it is a within-the-species communication that evolved in the noisy environment of streamside living so they can keep track of each other at a glance, as they move upstream or downstream.

Spotted sandpipers have been observed in another interesting behavior. A friend said he saw a peregrine falcon in flight, chasing a spotted sandpiper flying over a lake. Suddenly the sandpiper dove into the water. The falcon gave up and flew away, and the sandpiper surfaced and flew back onto the shore, safe again.

Could that be something new, a behavior not yet described in science? I checked the literature of field ornithology. Drat. A spotted sandpiper diving under the water to evade a hawk was a known phenomenon, observed by other field ornithologists.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.