How to Identify Shore Birds by Sight

Video Transcript

"Hello! Welcome to Expert Village. My name is Wayne Peterson and I'm the director of the Important Bird Areas Program for the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Today we're here at the Daniel Webster Wildlife Sanctuary in Marshfield, Massachusetts where we'll be talking about bird identification and some of the equipment and essential tools that are useful to get one started in this incredibly interesting pastime. One of my favorite groups of birds are the shore birds, and specifically this refers to the sandpipers and plovers that we often associate with summer beaches and mud flats and salt marches. There are lots of different species. Many of them are very settle in their plumage and pattern, but they all are characterized by having relatively long, slim legs and relatively long, slender bills in most species. These are birds that are basically inclined to run over the mud or the sand or possibly wade in shallow water, and then use their beaks to probe into the sub straight for food, which can be comprised of various sorts of invertebrate worms, little crustacean small what we call spat of mollusks like muscles and clams in this sort of thing, or the larvae water born insects. Wing pattern and tail pattern are very important identifying shore birds. In some species like the plovers they have very conspectus patterning on the underparts and on the head. The black bellied plover, for example, in it's breeding plumage is completely black underneath and sort of a marble gray and white on top. The little piping plover a federally threatened species on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States is pale sandy color with a partial black collar around it's chest, orange legs, and a little orange based dark tipped bill. This is a bird that blends in beautifully with the dry sand where typically, these birds nest while they're here with us in Massachusetts. "