This morning, I visited Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area, primarily hoping to find an increasing number and variety of shorebirds. After all, these messengers of autumn begin their southward migration by mid summer and August is often a good month to observe them on mudflats, stream banks or flooded fields.
Unfortunately, the refuge has been very dry this summer and I only encountered three shorebirds, all solitary sandpipers. These mid-sized, slender sandpipers, best identified by their white eye rings and olive colored legs, nest in spruce bogs of Northern Canada and Alaska and winter primarily in the Amazon River Basin. Unlike most shorebirds, they tend to shun open mudflats and are best found along the banks of marsh-lined streams. As their name implies, they generally migrate alone or in small groups; their diet consists mostly of freshwater invertebrates and they are thus rarely observed on tidal flats or ocean beaches.
While the solitary sandpipers were the highlight of my visit, I also encountered a large number of great egrets and great blue herons, more than a dozen double-crested cormorants, a single snowy egret and a lone cattle egret. Hopefully, periods of wet weather or an alteration in water flow at Eagle Bluffs will attract many more shorebirds to the floodplain refuge over the next few months.
