by Frank Keim
There is no mistaking Pectoral sandpipers, especially when you hear them courting on their nesting ground in spring. The males are equipped with an inflatable throat sac that allows them to produce an eerie hooting call that reminds me of a short version of a lighthouse foghorn as it warns ships to avoid a dangerous reef or rocky shoreline. In fact, all except one of the Yup’ik names of the bird are imitative of this haunting sound. Check these names out: Teguteguaq, Temtemtaaq, Quguquguaq, Tukutukuar. The only other name I’ve found, Uquir(aq), relates to its fatty flesh, and derives from the Yup’ik word, uquq, meaning oil or fat. This term relates to the tradition of young men hunting the bird in late summer after it fattens up to present as a gift to elders who regarded it as a delicacy. The bird is also recognizable by its distinctive stippled chest “apron” that ends neatly at its white belly.
Teguteguaq nest from the tundra of eastern Russia across Alaska all the way over to Hudson Bay in northern Canada. Most winter in southern South America, although a few migrate to Australasia for the winter, meaning that many of the birds make an annual round-trip migration of nearly 19,000 miles! When they return after their long migration north from South America through the Great Plains of the U.S. and Canada, they head for wet coastal tundra in arctic and subarctic Alaska, where they replenish their fat reserves with the insects and other invertebrates found there. They pick and probe in the mud for them, using both sight and touch to find their prey as they walk slowly through the grassy wetlands or tundra. Their habit of foraging and nesting among grasses and sedges has earned them the name, “grasspiper.” In this rich nutritional habitat they consume large quantities of insects and spiders, including crane fly larvae, midges, bees, grasshoppers and beetles. They also eat algae, seeds, small crustaceans like amphipods, and even tiny minnows.
The much larger male Pectorals arrive before the females, and immediately lay claim to their territory by performing an unforgettable display flight during which they rhythmically expand and contract their inflatable throat sac. The accompanying sound is a series of low-pitched hollow hoots that at first sounds like a foghorn and is the strangest call I’ve ever heard a sandpiper produce. I remember hearing those hoots early one morning while camped in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and I was totally awed by the haunting sound.
When small flocks of the smaller females arrive a few days later the displaying males fly directly over them with exaggerated slow wing beats, trying to dazzle them with their handsome stippled chests and foghorn hooting. Then after landing on the tundra, the males put on an even more captivating courting display, with their tails cocked, chest inflated, wings drooped, swaying and marching back and forth, stretching out their necks, raising and waving their wings and uttering those same stranger-than-fiction high-pitched hooting calls.
Although males defend territories against other males, they do not do so aggressively. They are polygynous, meaning they attempt to mate with many females. They do not form a pair bond with any of the females, so don’t defend the nests of those they’ve mated with.
After mating, the females build the nest, incubate the eggs, and tend the young without any help from males. By the time the eggs hatch, most males have already left the breeding areas. After the young fledge, females and juveniles gather in flocks, foraging mostly in coastal areas. Later, just before heading south for the winter all males and females join together in even larger flocks and begin their fall migration.
Females select their nest site inland from the coast, which is usually a small depression on the ground in a dry, raised area such as a hummock or ridge that affords them better visibility of the surrounding area. After molding a nest cup with their feet and breast, they line it with grasses sedges, mosses, lichens and leaves, then lay four eggs that range in color from creamy white to olive-buff, marked with brown, purple or gray splotches. After 21-23 days of incubation, the eggs hatch and the downy young emerge and immediately leave the nest. Their mother tends them, but they already know how to feed themselves. After three more weeks of foraging in tundra ponds with grassy edges, the young take their first flight and, although they continue to feed in mixed flocks of mothers and juveniles, they are basically on their own.
During their long flight south to Central and South America, migrating birds forage in a large variety of habitats, including river banks, ditches, salt lagoons, beaches, estuaries, and even above treeline in the alpine (puna) zone of the Andes. While wintering in South America, Pectoral sandpipers tend to use freshwater wetlands, wet pastures, and harvested agricultural fields.
Their common English name Pectoral relates to the inflatable throat sac just above the chest of the males. Their scientific name, Calidris melanotos, is Ancient Greek, meaning grayish shorebird with inky stipples on it.
Like so many other shorebirds, Teguteguaq are declining in number. Human degradation and destruction of wetlands along their migratory routes and in their winter habitats is one cause of this decline, but climate change will certainly also take a serious toll of their numbers in the future.
