Short-billed Dowitcher
Encyclopedia
Long-billed Dowitcher
The Long-billed Dowitcher, Limnodromus scolopaceus, is a medium-sized shorebird.Adults have yellowish legs and a long straight dark bill. The body is dark brown on top and reddish underneath with spotted throat and breast, bars on flanks. The tail has a black and white barred pattern...
, is a medium-sized, stocky, long-billed shorebird in the family Scolopacidae. It is an inhabitant of North America, Middle America, and northern South America
South America
South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
. It is strongly migratory; it completely vacates in breeding areas during the snow-bound months. This species favors a variety of habitats including tundra in the north to ponds and mudflats in the south. It feeds on invertebrates often by rapidly probing its bill into mud in a sewing machine fashion. It and the very similar Long-billed Dowitcher
Long-billed Dowitcher
The Long-billed Dowitcher, Limnodromus scolopaceus, is a medium-sized shorebird.Adults have yellowish legs and a long straight dark bill. The body is dark brown on top and reddish underneath with spotted throat and breast, bars on flanks. The tail has a black and white barred pattern...
were considered one species until 1950. Field identification of the two American Limnodromus remains difficult today. However, the two differ in subtle points of plumage and they differ more substantially in vocalizations. The names of American dowitchers are misleading, as there is much overlap in their bill lengths. Only a small percentage can be identified by this character alone.
The body of adults is dark brown on top and reddish underneath. The tail has a black and white barred pattern. The legs are a yellowish color. There are three subspecies with slight variations in appearance:
- L. g. griseus has a white belly and barred flanks.
- L. g. hendersoni has a reddish belly and spotted flanks.
- L. g. caurinus has a white belly with heavily barred flanks and densely spotted breast.
None of these combines the reddish belly and barred flanks of the Long-billed Dowitcher. The winter plumage
Feather
Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds and some non-avian theropod dinosaurs. They are considered the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates, and indeed a premier example of a complex evolutionary novelty. They...
is largely grey. This bird can range from 23 to 32 cm (9.1 to 12.6 in) in length, 46 to 56 cm (18.1 to 22 in) in wingspan and 73–155 g (2.6–5.5 oz) in body mass.
Their breeding habitat includes bogs, tidal marshes, mudflats or forest clearings south of the tree line in northern North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. L. g. griseus breeds in northern Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
; L. g. hendersoni breeds in north central Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
; L. g. caurinus breeds in southern Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
.
These birds nest on the ground, usually near water. Their nests are shallow depressions in clumps of grass or moss, which are lined with fine grasses, twigs and leaves. They lay four, sometimes three, olive-buff to brown eggs
Egg (biology)
An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...
. Incubation lasts for 21 days and is done by both sexes.
The downy juvenile birds leave the nest soon after hatching. Parental roles are not well known, but it is believed the female departs and leaves the male to tend the chicks, which find all their own food.
They migrate
Bird migration
Bird migration is the regular seasonal journey undertaken by many species of birds. Bird movements include those made in response to changes in food availability, habitat or weather. Sometimes, journeys are not termed "true migration" because they are irregular or in only one direction...
to the southern United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and as far south as Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
. This bird is more likely to be seen near ocean coasts during migration than the Long-billed Dowitcher. This species occurs in western Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
only as an extremely rare vagrant.
These birds forage by probing in shallow water or on wet mud. They mainly eat insect
Insect
Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...
s, mollusks, crustacean
Crustacean
Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...
s and marine worm
Worm
The term worm refers to an obsolete taxon used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, and stems from the Old English word wyrm. Currently it is used to describe many different distantly-related animals that typically have a long cylindrical...
s, but also eat some plant material.
The call of this bird is more mellow than that of the Long-billed Dowitcher, and is useful in identification, particularly of the difficult adult plumages.
External links
- Short-billed Dowitcher Limnodromus griseus - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification InfoCenter
- Short-billed Dowitcher Species Account - Cornell Lab of Ornithology
- Short-billed Dowitcher Information - South Dakota Birds and Birding
- Short-billed Dowitcher videos on the Internet Bird Collection
- Short-billed Dowitcher, Cape Jourimain Nature Centre