14 Nebraskaland • July 2019
IN THE FIELD
It was fun while it lasted, but summer is over. At least that
is the case for a number of shorebirds (plovers, sandpipers,
snipes, phalaropes and others) that have departed their
summer breeding haunts to our north and are now undertaking
their "fall" or southbound migration. Typically, the first
fall migrant shorebirds observed in Nebraska are lesser and
greater yellowlegs, which appear about June 20 and are
quickly followed by the closely-related solitary sandpipers.
By July, more than a dozen species are moving through the
state and heading south.
The commencement of shorebirds' fall migration comes
a little more than a week after the last of the Arctic-
bound white-rumped sandpipers pass through the state in
early June. However, some individuals migrate south even
earlier. A female long-billed curlew outfitted with a satellite
transmitter migrated from the Gulf of Mexico to the Nebraska
Sandhills at the end of March in 2010. Presumably it found a
mate and nested, but it departed Nebraska and headed back
south by mid-May, likely because its nesting attempt failed.
Many of the nesting attempts by the other early-arriving
shorebirds in June and early July likely experienced a similar
fate. Others of their kind that beat the odds and whose young
hatched will remain on their nesting grounds longer to tend
to their young. Many of those individuals migrate south at
a later date, and most juveniles will migrate later still, in
August, September and October.
Shorebirds are vagabonds and many individuals travel up
to 20,000 miles in a year. Whatever time of year it may be,
you can rest assured that somewhere on the planet there are
shorebirds migrating.
FALL MIGRATION IN SUMMER
By Joel G. Jorgensen
Wilson's Phalarope – Justin Haag
Common Snipe – Jon Farrar
Least Sandpiper – Chris Masada Long-billed Curlew – Justin Haag
