by Frank Keim
Have you ever wondered about the word “sandpiper?” I did, and when I finally looked it up, I found one of the meanings of the word “pipe” is to chirp, peep or cheep. Thus, a “sandpiper” is a bird that chirps or peeps in the sand. Since Western, Semipalmated, Least and a few other sandpipers make this sound, and are look-alikes, these species are all referred to as “peeps.”
In Yup’ik, there is a parallel to the English usage. Iisuraaraq is the name the people in Scammon Bay and the Yukon River area use for this shorebird. Hooper Bay and Chevak use the variation Iiyuraaraq, since the sound “s” becomes “y” in that area.
The Kuskokwim variation is Iisuruaraq. All of these names loosely translate as, “the dear little one that makes the sound iisur, or iiyur.” And if you’ve ever listened to this bird, you’ll have to agree that they do make a sound that you could write this way. Anyway, there is yet another Yup’ik name for the Western sandpiper, cenairaq, which means “a bird that lives and feeds along the shore.”
The Western sandpiper’s scientific name, Calidris mauri, meaning Mauri’s speckled water bird, was bestowed on it in 1838 by the famous naturalist Charles Bonaparte for his friend Ernesto Mauri. But that’s another story. Let’s go to some interesting behavior.
While migrant and wintering Westerns are found on open shorelines, tidal mudflats and sandy beaches, during the breeding season these birds are mostly found on tundra slopes where they eat insects, such as flies and beetles, plus a few spiders and crustaceans.
During migration they have a much larger menu, including insects, crustaceans, mollusks, marine worms and a few seeds every now and then. Most of the time they forage for their food by walking in shallow water or on wet mud or sand, probing below the surface with their sensitive bills. Being opportunists, they also pick up food items from the surface.
After returning from their long migration from as far away as northern Peru and Surinam in South America, Iisuraaraq seek out their old breeding grounds in the dry tundra of western Alaska and eastern Siberia.
The male immediately establishes his nesting territory and chirrs (the Yup’ik sound iisur) vigorously while performing his display flight over this coveted area. Once an interested female alights nearby, he lands too and tries to dazzle her with his charm. He slowly approaches her in a hunched posture, tail raised over his back, repeatedly uttering his sexiest trilled call. If she likes what she sees and hears, well, you know what happens next.
With Westerns that breed in the north the courting period is fleeting, since they don’t have any time to spare in the short window of warm weather up here. Even with global heating, the nesting pair has to worry about climatic time constraints.
While the male was doing his display flight, trying to attract a female, he was also scraping out several nest sites on the ground for his potential mate to choose from once she decided he was the one-and-only. It doesn’t take him long to do this, since the scrapes are only shallow depressions on slightly elevated shrubby tundra near a water source such as a marsh or pothole lake.
Each is lined with grass, tiny leaves and moss, and is sometimes domed with sedges and grasses. After choosing the site, she adds a little to what her paramour has already placed there. Then it is time to be serious and prepare for the future. Yes, eggs, incubation and childcare.
She lays four brown-splotched whitish-brown eggs, which are incubated by both parents for about three weeks. At first, the female broods the eggs from late afternoon to midmorning the next day, at which time the male takes over for a few hours. But gradually the male increases his share of the time. Sometimes the female departs from the nest and her mate even before the eggs hatch. Then it is up to him to finish the job.
When the eggs hatch, they do so almost simultaneously, and the already downy-feathered young leave the nest within hours after hatching. This is called precocial behavior and is necessary for survival reasons. If you’ve ever found a sandpiper nest, you’ve probably noticed how large the eggs are in comparison to the size of eggs belonging to non-sandpipers. This is so the chicks can develop inside the eggs to a size where they’re able to trot away from the nest right after they’re born.
Sometimes both parents care for the young, but often the female deserts them after a few days, thus leaving the male alone to care for them. He really doesn’t have much responsibility, though, since the chicks already instinctively know how to feed themselves, just watching the old man to learn about the variability of foods that are available in the area.
After almost three weeks of feverish almost constant feeding, the young are mature enough to take wing for the first time, and then they are completely on their own. Soon afterward, both parents depart the breeding area for more southerly climes. The fledglings hang around for another two to three weeks, though, frenetically feeding to fatten up for their long migration south.
Listen to these birds at any time of the year as they move and whistle constantly along the water’s edge, digging with their specialized bill, and you will hear why they are called peeps and pipers.
