Labor Day Shorebirds

Labor Day weekend is perhaps the classic time to get out and bone up on wader identification. Along the east coast of North America, birders are searching sod farms and golf courses for grasspipers, while west coasters are scanning beaches and mudflats for Asian strays and spectacular hybrids. And here in southeast Arizona, we’re spending as much time as we can at playa pools and sewage ponds.

Gellert's first birding trip.

This autumn–for southbound shorebirds and their watchers, the fall season starts in late June–has been a good one in the area, nowhere better than at the grandly named Lake Cochise, the large sewage pond that serves the small town of Willcox, about 85 miles east of Tucson.

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Today’s choice of Willcox as a destination was made largely by Dave’s discovery earlier in the week of a Ruddy Turnstone, a rare bird in southeast Arizona. The turnstone was easy to find on our arrival: just look for chips of dried mud being thrown into the air. The bird’s excavations were a source of great excitement for some of the smaller shorebirds, too, who followed it around like gulls behind a tractor.

This juvenile Baird’s Sandpiper, one of more than 50 on the Vanish-colored mud, was especially persistent, and stuck close to the turnstone for more than 10 minutes, picking and probing wherever the turnstone had flung.

Feeding relationships like that seem to be common among migrant shorebirds. Big species like American Avocets are often attended by smaller birds, cleaning up the scraps from their larger fellows’ table.

This juvenile Western Sandpiper shared its recurvirostrid benefactor with a Wilson’s Phalarope, both feeding literally in the larger bird’s wake.

By the time our three hours at the pond were up, we’d tallied something like 11 species of shorebird, including Semipalmated Plover, Ruddy Turnstone, and more than 10 juvenile Stilt Sandpipers–not half bad for a morning in the desert!