We saw a photo of a gorgeous juvenile buff-breasted sandpiper taken a few days ago down on the rocky beach at the Timber Point section of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Biddeford. It got us reminiscing and trying to remember when and where we had last seen one of these striking birds. We remembered the handful of times when we’d seen them here in Maine and at Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in upstate New York, but the exact last time and place, we could not remember.

Buff-breasted sandpipers nest in the Arctic, about a quarter of the population nesting on Alaska’s North Slope (where their fate is entangled with issues around drilling for oil in that famous area) and the other 70-80% nesting in Canada in the northern Northwest Territories and the western part of Nunavut. A small number nest in the Russian Arctic.

Here in the northeastern U.S., buff-breasted sandpipers have never been common. Their primary U.S. and southern Canada migration corridor in spring and fall is through the mid-continent grasslands. Along with birds like Eskimo curlew and American golden-plover that use (or formerly used, in the case of the curlew) these grasslands during at least spring migration, buff-breasted sandpipers were heavily harvested by market hunters for a period in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Much of the grassland habitat was also converted to agriculture. Eskimo curlews became extinct and buff-breasted sandpiper and American golden-plover populations plummeted but held on. Both species remain of high conservation concern.

In the fall, though, some juvenile buff-breasted sandpipers drift west and east from the rest of the population and show up as regular but relatively rare or uncommon sightings in other parts of southern Canada and the U.S.

Here in Maine, usually 5-10 of these juvenile birds are spotted each fall. Amazingly, a smattering of them make it all the way across the Atlantic each fall, detected and enjoyed by the eager birders of the UK and other parts of Europe.

Each fall, buff-breasted sandpipers eventually make their way south to Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil to winter. That means their normal migration travel distance is something like 9,500 miles each way. Along the way they need to find safe spots to stop. In recent years, our birding colleagues on Aruba have been finding flocks of them with increasing frequency each fall. Usually these are small flocks of less than a dozen but occasionally more, up to forty.

Although we don’t get to see it down here in Maine, buff-breasted sandpipers are famous for some fascinating breeding behavior. Multiple males display near each other in leks to which females come to observe the displays and choose with whom to mate. After mating, the females depart the lek and the males are not involved with any of the incubation of eggs or care of young. Male buff-breasted sandpipers have various displays involving showing off the bright white underside of one or both wings. Occasionally they show these wing-flashing behaviors even during spring migration.

If you want to see more about the migration routes of the buff-breasted sandpiper, check out the Audubon Bird Migration Explorer at: explorer.audubon.org

Jeffrey V. Wells, Ph.D., is a Fellow of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Vice President of Boreal Conservation for National Audubon. Dr. Wells is one of the nation's leading bird experts and conservation biologists. He is a coauthor of the seminal “Birds of Maine” book and author of the “Birder’s Conservation Handbook.” His grandfather, the late John Chase, was a columnist for the Boothbay Register for many years. Allison Childs Wells, formerly of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is a senior director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, a nonprofit membership organization working statewide to protect the nature of Maine. Both are widely published natural history writers and are the authors of the popular books, “Maine’s Favorite Birds” (Down East Books) and “Birds of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao: A Site and Field Guide,” (Cornell University Press).