Stilt Sandpiper

Overview

The Stilt Sandpiper combines a long, slightly down-curved bill with unusually long, greenish-yellow legs, giving it a lanky, almost dowitcher-like silhouette among the calidrids. It breeds on subarctic tundra in North America and migrates to wetlands across the southern United States, Central America, and South America.

Feathers are most often found around shallow freshwater or brackish wetlands and flooded agricultural fields used as migratory stopovers.

Feather Identification

• Breeding underparts: densely and evenly barred with dark chevrons across a whitish base, one of the most heavily marked underparts patterns among North American shorebirds.
• Head: a rufous cap and cheek patch contrasts with a white supercilium in breeding plumage.
• Nonbreeding feathers: plain gray-brown above and white below with a distinct pale eyebrow stripe, much duller than breeding plumage.
• Wing and rump: a narrow white wingbar and a whitish rump/uppertail patch, useful in flight.
• Versus dowitchers: Stilt Sandpiper feathers are more slender and the bill only gently curved rather than long and straight like a dowitcher's; barring pattern on breeding underparts is also more chevron-like than the dowitcher's finer spotting.

Plumage Notes

Breeding adults show a rufous crown and ear patch, a white supercilium, and dense dark barring across the entire underside, a pattern shared by both sexes. Nonbreeding adults lose the rufous head markings and barred underparts entirely, becoming plain gray-brown above and white below with a clear pale eyebrow.

Juveniles show neatly scaled upperpart feathers with buff fringes and a plain whitish underside, lacking the adult's barring. Adults molt into nonbreeding plumage largely after migration, while juveniles gradually acquire first-winter plumage on the wintering grounds.

Habitat & Range

Stilt Sandpipers breed on wet, hummocky tundra in the central Canadian and Alaskan Arctic. During migration they favor shallow freshwater wetlands, flooded fields, and managed impoundments across the interior United States, wintering from the Gulf Coast and Caribbean south through Central America into South America.

Behavior & Field Notes

Stilt Sandpipers feed with a distinctive, rapid, sewing-machine-like probing action in shallow water, often submerging the bill and part of the head, a behavior that helps distinguish live birds from dowitchers even at a distance. They frequently wade belly-deep, taking advantage of their long legs.

Nests are shallow tundra scrapes lined with lichen and leaves. The flight call is a soft, low "querp." Because migratory stopovers often concentrate large numbers at shared wetlands, feathers can turn up alongside those of dowitchers and other calidrids at the same site.