Large Shorebirds & Waders

Once again, we’re heading to the water. Most of my encounters with these larger shorebirds have come during coastal trips, but I’ve found a few along my travels through Utah too.

The Antelope Island causeway is one of my favorite places to look. With its broad shoreline and shallow water, parts of Great Salt Lake can feel remarkably coastal. These birds work the edges, probing sand and mud for a quick meal. Their bills may look almost comically long, but each is well suited to the way its owner feeds.

Take the Marbled Godwit, for example. Its long, slightly upturned bill can reach prey buried deep beneath the surface. Watch one feeding and you might see it plunge its entire bill into the mud, sometimes burying its face in the process!

The Long-billed Curlew is hard to overlook once you see it. It is North America’s largest shorebird, and that long, sweeping bill gives it a silhouette unlike almost anything else on the shore. The bill helps it reach prey buried beneath the surface; females generally have noticeably longer bills than males.

Curlews aren’t strictly coastal birds. They breed in open grasslands of the interior West, including Utah, and can also be found foraging in fields and other open areas. That’s a good reminder that “shorebird” describes a family of birds, not a rule about where you must find them.

The similar-looking Whimbrel is smaller, with a shorter, downcurved bill and a boldly striped crown. Those head stripes become especially useful when a curlew is too far away to judge its size.

I photographed this pair in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico: a Whimbrel on the left and a Willet on the right. Put them together, and the difference in bill shape becomes much easier to see.

The Whimbrel has the familiar long, curved bill, built for probing and picking prey from coastal habitats. The Willet has a heavier, mostly straight bill and a plainer gray-brown look. It might seem unremarkable while standing still, but watch it take flight: the bold black-and-white wing pattern is one of the easiest Willet field marks to recognize.

Some shorebirds make you work hard for your identification. Yellowlegs give you a pretty generous first clue: those bright yellow legs stand out against the shallow water.

From my experience, they also seem to be some of the more vocal birds in the bunch. A yellowlegs calling as it lifts off can be much easier to notice than one quietly wading along the edge of a pool.

Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs look similar, but Greater is taller and more robust, usually with a longer bill that may angle slightly upward. Lesser is more compact, with a shorter, straighter bill. Size helps most when they’re side by side; when they aren’t, listen for the calls and combine as many clues as you can.

One trip up Diamond Fork Canyon gave me a great reminder not to think of shorebirds as strictly coastal. Spring runoff had formed a marshy pool, and a small flock of American Avocets had settled in.

Hanging out with them was a Long-billed Dowitcher. It was a fun bird to find in a place where I wouldn’t normally expect one. Dowitchers feed by repeatedly pushing their long bills up and down into wet mud, a motion often compared to a sewing machine.

The tricky part is telling Long-billed from Short-billed Dowitcher. Despite their names, their bill lengths overlap, and plumage can be difficult to judge. Habitat and especially voice are often more useful clues. For me, the bigger lesson was simpler: whenever a patch of water attracts shorebirds, take a closer look. You never know who might have joined the flock.