Josh and I were walking around the pond at Country Park when he spotted these tiny, quick-stepping Spotted Sandpipers along the shore. Now, I grew up in the Midwest and don’t know my shorebirds for a hill of beans, so I had to do a little detective work to figure out which of the 10 jillion sandpipers this is. The spots helped, as did the eyering and eyestripe, but the dealmaker was the way it walked.
The Spotted Sandpiper has a habit of wagging—or teetering—its behind as it walks, which these birds were doing like crazy. Some folks even call these birds Teeter Tails. Cornell says, “The function of the teetering motion typical of this species has not been determined. Chicks teeter nearly as soon as they hatch from the egg. The teetering gets faster when the bird is nervous, but stops when the bird is alarmed, aggressive, or courting.” Sounds kind of like that nervous leg-jiggling some people do. It’s a much cuter habit in a Spotted Sandpiper.
