In case you haven’t heard, the Globetrotters are in town. Not the basketball ones, in case you thought of them first for some reason - I’m talking about the actual globe trotters, the Arctic-nesting shorebirds. August is prime time to see these impressive, if unassuming travelers here on the Cape and Islands. About 50 species of plover and sandpiper have been recorded here all time, but don’t freak out, as you could only expect 8 or 10 of those - a dozen at most - on a walk in good shorebird habitat in August. So you’ve got a fighting chance at picking out some of them with a little study.
These athletic, earth-toned little birds stitch the hemisphere together with their flights, often spanning from the Arctic circle to southern South America. The needle comes up through the earth near some buggy, boggy tundra near the north pole, then down again maybe on the shores of Hudson Bay, then up again, then down on Cape Cod or the Delmarva peninsula, then up, then down on a Caribbean Island or Venezuela. Some, like knots and godwits, stitch all the way to Patagonia at the other end of the planet. Why? How can it be worth it to fly that far to eat some small clams and worms? Couldn’t they find those somewhere closer, reachable by safer, shorter flights? These are just some of the mysteries of shorebird lives.
Take Whimbrels, one of my favorites. These scythe-billed sandpipers nest in Arctic Canada and winter from the Caribbean to Brazil. In between they might stop in huge blueberry fields on the Canadian Maritimes to feast on blueberries and bugs, then drop down here to Wellfleet to crunch on the billions of fiddler crabs that scuttle en mass through the marsh grass, sounding like heavy rain. From here they either go straight to the Caribbean or South America to winter in a crab-rich coastal mangrove forest. In spring they might go up through Texas to get back to the breeding ground. The Wellfleet marshes, important as they are to the Whimbrels, are just one scene in a complex annual play.
In parts of Chatham, with some effort, luck, and a boat, you might see Red Knots or Hudsonian Godwits, distinctive species who go all the way to southern Chile and Argentina. But just about any sandy beach will have Sanderlings, the charming little sandpipers Roger Tory Peterson described as chasing the waves like clockwork toys. Consider that some of these mysterious birds may stay here for the winter, while others will fly well south of the equator – one of the weirdest things I saw in Peru was a small flock of Sanderlings at a high Andean lake. Why are some Sanderlings content with a cold Cape winter while others fly an additional 6000 miles to southern Chile?
It's a mystery that has plagued me for years, and something you can ponder on your next long walk on the beach. Those well-traveled little birds you may have ignored for years have a story to tell, but they keep some secrets to themselves. Whether you visit the bay side beaches and flats of Sandwich or Dennis, the Sound shores of Yarmouth or Hyannis, or the big backside beaches of the Outer Cape, there are shorebirds to contemplate in August.
They won’t windmill dunk, spin a ball on their wing, or pull your shorts down while you shoot a free throw, but these globe trotters can fly 10,000 miles between wintering and breeding areas – I’d like to see the other “Globetrotters” do that. You know, like, without an airplane.
