Spotted Sandpiper

Spotted Sandpiper Images, Facts and Information:

Actitis macularia

  • Spotted Sandpipers are medium sized shorebirds with bills slightly shorter than the length of their heads, they have rounded breasts and a body that tapers to their tails.
  • In breeding plumage they have bold dark spots on their chests and belly and orange bills, in nonbreeding plumage the spots are completely or nearly completely missing and the bills aren’t orange.
  • Female Spotted Sandpipers may mate with up to four males, the males then incubate the eggs she lays and the males raise the young. This is called polyandry. There are exceptions to this where the female mates with only one male and does a little to help raise the young.
  • The female may store sperm internally for up to one month so the eggs she lays for one male may be fathered by a different male.
  • Spotted Sandpipers lay 3 to 5 eggs which take 19 to 22 days to hatch.
  • Spotted Sandpipers are migratory and spend winters in the southern most parts of the U.S. into Mexico, South and Central America and the Caribbean.
  • They are one of the most widespread sandpiper species in North America. On their breeding grounds they are almost always in close proximity to a freshwater shoreline which can be from lakes, rivers, creeks, ponds and coastal areas.
  • Spotted Sandpipers eat midges, flies, mayflies, beetles, grasshoppers, snails, worms, tiny crustaceans and small fish.
  • A group of sandpipers can be called a “fling”, “hill”, “bind”, “contradiction” or a “time-step” of sandpipers.
  • Spotted Sandpipers can live up to 12 years.

I hope you enjoy viewing my Spotted Sandpiper photos.

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