Short-billed Dowitchers, Black-bellied Plover, Lesser Yellowlegs and Greater Yellowlegs
Further east along the beach, in a series of shallow lagoons and mud flats between the beach and a golf course, many sandpipers, wading birds, terns, gulls, and pelicans had gathered. It was the perfect place to practice shorebird identification – for me, an ongoing challenge and endless pleasure. Almost always, the behavior of a shorebird – the way it stands and moves and feeds, quick or deliberate, graceful or dowdy, alert, nervous or placid – identifies it even more quickly than its appearance. So many of them look alike – but their personalities are often vividly different.
Short-billed Dowitchers busily probed the shallow water, rarely lifting a round grayish head with its pale white eye-streak long enough to show the very long bill. A “Short-billed” Dowitcher’s bill is only short compared to a Long-billed Dowitcher. The two are very similar in appearance – stocky, sandpiper-like birds, in grayish barred and speckled winter plumage and typically very intent on probing steadily for food. Telling the difference between them is beyond my ability, unless I can hear their different calls – and these were all busy feeding, not coming and going, and not calling. I guessed Short-billed because they usually prefer beaches and mudflats like this – and checking a birding report by the Kiawah Island naturalist later confirmed they had been seen there.
Small, neat, snow-white and gray-backed Sanderlings, little Dunlins with their hunched postures and drooping bills, plump Red Knots and several long-legged Willets foraged in the shallow water, with a few Killdeer, one harlequin Ruddy Turnstone, and one watchful Black-bellied Plover that – as always – seemed to spend most of its time with its head held high, just looking around, darting in this direction and that, much less intent on feeding than most of the other birds, and giving the impression of keen awareness of its surroundings, and of the behaviors of all the other birds around – and of any approaching danger.
Meanwhile, three Lesser Yellowlegs stepped daintily in the shallow water very near the edge of one lagoon, and one Greater Yellowlegs foraged in the water nearby. Both are long-legged, slender, very active and a delight to watch – especially the slightly smaller and more delicate Lesser Yellowlegs. Like most shorebirds at this time of year, they were in grayish, almost nondescript winter plumage – but their long, spindly yellow legs are hard to miss. Both flew a short distance at different times, the Lesser Yellowlegs calling a sweet soft too-too, too-too, while the Greater Yellowlegs was louder and slightly rough, more zhreeoo-zhreeoo – I think this was their call usually described as tew, tew.