Four winter shorebirds in four weeks

It hasn't exactly been shorebird weather, but I'm now up to four species in Chatham-Kent in the last three and a half weeks. It has been the tale of two winters, with an unusually mild beginning up until late January, and then the brutal cold and freezing rain over the last few weeks. So the first two species of the new year, Dunlin and Purple Sandpiper, were late lingering ones and presumably left mere hours before the arrival of the polar vortex.

Dunlin is to be expected, as it is a regular and sometimes abundant spring, autumn and early winter migrant. The Purple Sandpiper normally comes through somewhere in Ontario in the late fall and early winter, but the latter part of 2018 was almost totally devoid of this species anywhere in Ontario. Only two birds were reported until I came across this one on January 18, at Erieau, traveling in the company of the Dunlin.

Wilson's Snipe is not normally a wintering species, but one has been found annually in a creek that never freezes southeast of Blenheim. It is not a guarantee anytime one checks on it. I have seen it less than half the time I've looked for it.

Yesterday, Keith reported seeing a Killdeer along Rose Beach Line, just east of Rondeau. As I was headed out that way anyway, it was easy to check it out. (I stopped to look for the snipe on the way out, without seeing it.) There are a couple of seeps in a low spot close to the road which even in the coldest weather seldom seems to freeze, although it might get snow covered. And there it was.

It was feeding in the saturated grassy area adjacent to the bit of ice. At times it would venture right out onto the ice, looking quite out of place!

The bird was seen shivering, which is not something I recall having seen before. Given the weather though, perhaps it was not such a surprise. It was there until at least early afternoon, but by mid-afternoon it had moved out of sight. Killdeer are typically an early spring arrival and often appear by late February or early March. However, maybe this one felt just a little too enamoured with the brisk southwesterly winds of the previous day or so, and decided it had jumped the gun on its spring migration and returned to a warmer climate.

What shorebird species will be next? Probably American Woodcock, although I had a Lesser Yellowlegs on Feb 27, 2017!