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Swimming With Birds by Rebecca Pugh
If you’re swimming by the rocky portion of Crane Beach, and you spot a pot-bellied shorebird with a drooping bill of orange and gray, stop to see if you see mostly greyish above and whitish below, with speckles on the breast.
Some of the black shoulder feathers might be edged in reddish brown, and you might see a purple sheen if the light is right. Juveniles and nonbreeding adults are covered in slate gray.
Purple sandpipers winter on rocky North Atlantic coastlines.
You might hear several of them chortling to each other: it sounds like a falling major fourth, from D to A.
This time of year, their vocalizations are quiet. Come spring, they will migrate far north of here and seek out places of moss and wrack at the Arctic Ocean’s edge for breeding.
Purple sandpipers are monogamous. Both parents build and tend the nest until the chicks hatch. At hatching, the female departs and leaves the baby-rearing to the male.
Purple sandpipers are sometimes confused with dunlins, the other dark sandpiper that winters here. Here are some of the differences:
Dunlins have an all-black bill and black feet. Purple sandpipers have the two-colored bill and orange feet.
Dunlins tend to congregate on sandy parts of the shoreline, while purple sandpipers tend to gather on rocky places.
Come spring, purple sandpipers will migrate so far north that we don’t have a breeding bird survey count for them.
Partners in Flight rates them a 14 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score as a bird of high conservation concern.
Purple sandpiper
We believe that their greatest challenges are pesticide poisoning, oil spills, water pollution, and rising tides.
For them to be able to breed successfully, they need quiet nesting grounds and horizontal planes of moorland and stony plateau.
If their summer residence is under water, or if they are struggling with pesticides or oil slicks, they cannot breed.
Much of their favorite food only has a scientific name, though they do also like mussels, periwinkles, worms, sea snails, and small crabs.
They forage in the falling tide, where small fishes and other prey are freshly exposed. You may see them hunting just after high tide.
In storms, they tend to take shelter on rocks. These hardy birds stay out in the open in the middle of the wind.
The oldest known purple sandpiper was at least 20 years, 9 months old, when it was spotted in Sweden, two decades after it had first been banded.
So, if you are dipping in the cold water over by the honeypot of large stones and boulders at Crane Beach and happen to see a pot-bellied bird with the call on the falling fourth, stop and wish it well.
It will be here all winter, out on the granite boulders, waiting out the storms.
Rebecca Pugh, author of “Running With Birds,” is a storyteller, musician, science writer, clergy member, cold-water swimmer, and runner. Her training comes from Harriet Tubman and Harriet Hemenway, Jim Berry, and “All About Birds” at the Cornell Ornithological Labs.
