Monday, December 6, 1999
Sea birds often
forced to take flight
LAST week, I took a walk on a North Shore beach and
was soon following the tracks of a wandering tattler. The delicate
three-toed marks of this migratory shorebird look like the type of
flower petals a person might stencil along the edges of walls for
decoration.
I traced the pretty tracks for a while, then abruptly
they disappeared. A few yards down the beach, another set of tracks told
the tale: A running dog had chased the bird away.
This story in the sand reminded me of an East Coast
study I once read in which researchers counted the number of times per
day a group of shorebirds flew off to avoid jogging humans and running
dogs.
The scientists calculated that the energy-intense
flights were so numerous, the birds could barely eat enough to stay
alive.
But at least birds have the ability to fly off. Sand
crabs, a favorite prey of some dogs in my neighborhood, aren't so lucky.
The dogs chase crabs into their holes, then dig furiously until the crab
lies pawed to death beside its wrecked home.
As I walked down the beach, the tattler's tracks
reappeared, literally, from thin air. A few steps later, I saw the bird
itself, probing the sand for invertebrates with its long beak, its tail
bobbing busily in the process.
WHAT to do? If I continued walking, I would startle
the bird into flying and thus waste its precious energy avoiding me. But
I wanted to keep going. This was an important hour of exercise for me
after a long, sedentary day.
I stopped and watched the bird. To my surprise, it
began scratching the side of its head with its foot like a dog, except
the bird performed this maneuver while balancing perfectly on one leg.
Having relieved its itch, the tattler raised a
yellowish leg in a graceful stance and eyed me for a few seconds.
Apparently I posed little threat because the bird soon resumed its
run-and-probe search for food.
Wandering tattlers arrive in the tropics in August,
spend the winter, then return to Alaska or northern Canada in April or
May to breed. Unlike the plovers, however, tattlers don't stand tall.
Rather, they hold head and neck in a distinct horizontal position.
Tattlers are well-named. Their call, usually uttered
in flight, is a clear trill: oo-li-li-li-li, which sounds like their
Hawaiian name, 'ulili. To me, these birds sound like the signal on my
answering machine.
Slowly, I continued my walk down the beach -- and so
did the bird. The tattler ran along the shoreline ahead of me stopping
occasionally to peck the sand. When it stopped, so did I. Then we walked
some more.
Eventually, I had to get around the bird to get home.
I walked high up the beach and skirted some bushes until I passed the
now-wary bird. It did not fly away, however, but simply watched me
tiptoe past, then resumed eating.
I was impressed that this smart little shorebird flew
off when a dog approached but saved its strength when I passed closely
by. I'm looking forward to our next walk.
