{"id":99939,"date":"2021-07-05T06:34:41","date_gmt":"2021-07-05T12:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=99939"},"modified":"2021-07-05T07:38:30","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T13:38:30","slug":"the-oversexed-and-highly-aggressive-spotted-sandpiper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2021\/07\/05\/the-oversexed-and-highly-aggressive-spotted-sandpiper\/","title":{"rendered":"The Oversexed And Highly Aggressive Spotted Sandpiper"},"content":{"rendered":"

While watching the sexual and pugnacious antics of these sandpipers I described the situation as a “sex circus” to my shooting companion. Not far from the truth if you ask me (although of course I have no personal experience with sex circuses…).<\/p>\n

Note: Some of the following photos are softer than you’re used to seeing from me. In some cases the softness was due to the challenges of photographing multiple birds in flight or involved in very quick action. In other cases the cause of the softness is unknown – it just happens sometimes. But I think all of the photos are sharp enough for documentary purposes.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Four days ago along the shore of a mountain stream this pair of Spotted Sandpipers felt the urge to mate.<\/p>\n

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It was a rather long and drawn out affair. When the act had finally been completed the male actually stood on top of her for a few moments as if to relish his accomplishment but I’m not including those shots because their faces were mostly shaded.<\/p>\n

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When the male dismounted the female she raised both wings almost immediately. In my experience this is fairly typical behavior for the females of a variety of shorebirds and wading birds after mating. But what happened next was far from typical.<\/p>\n

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She folded her right wing, kept her left wing raised vertically and…<\/p>\n

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began a very slow walk to the shore with her wing in that position.<\/p>\n

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Fifteen photos later she still had her left wing raised vertically and her right wing folded.<\/p>\n

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Finally, 25 photos after that, she began to lower her wing just before she reached the water.<\/p>\n

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When her first tippy-toes touched the water she folded her left wing completely and then soon took off.<\/p>\n

As I said, in this situation two raised wings is typical behavior in some birds but a single raised wing is unique in my experience. I don’t know if it was a quirky behavior of an individual bird or fairly typical of the species. I tried to research it but struck out. Either way I was pleased to be able to document it.<\/p>\n

It was immediately after the mating that all the real excitement began.<\/p>\n

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The male began to chase the female, at great speeds both in flight and on foot, all around both shores of the stream.<\/p>\n

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He was relentless and she seemed just as determined to keep away from him. The incredible speed of these little birds made the behavior very difficult to photograph but I think this shot shows that both birds were running very fast.<\/p>\n

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She topped this large rock with the male still in pursuit (at upper right) so she made her getaway.<\/p>\n

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This next photo, taken 1\/10th of a second later, shows the male already at the top of the rock. That should give you some idea of their speed. I like his reflection at bottom right.<\/p>\n

It was at about this point that two other Spotted Sandpipers joined in the fray. They came from out of nowhere and all four birds were buzzing around, in flight and on the ground, as they chased each other and sounded their alarm\/aggression calls. It was a frenetic and noisy scene and it was all hormone-driven.<\/p>\n

This is when I said out loud “This reminds me of a sex circus”.<\/p>\n

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At times, what I believe to be the original male seemed to be guarding the female rather than chasing her, but it went back and forth so it was often impossible to interpret what was really going on.<\/p>\n

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Here the female has one of the males in pursuit of her but I don’t know which one.<\/p>\n

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I found the sounds from the four highly excited and calling sandpipers to be almost as attention-getting as all the bird bodies zooming around in the air quite close to me. Believe me, these little birds can make some noise.<\/p>\n

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Perhaps it was inappropriate of me to refer to Spotted Sandpipers as “oversexed” in my title but remember, all of this was hormone-driven and I don’t believe I overstated things when I referred to them as “highly aggressive”. Cornell’s Birds of the World has this to say about Spotted Sandpiper aggression during breeding season:<\/p>\n

“During breeding season, chasing and fleeing observed in all social contexts in which aggression normally occurs: mate acquisition and defense; sexual pursuit and avoidance; and defense of nests, young, and territories. Intense chasing and fleeing occur most often in association with female-female competition for mate. Female fights may continue for up to 1 h, with birds in direct contact for about half of the total time. Injuries to legs, eyes, and wings are common. Females also chase and harass their mates when males temporarily stop incubating and leave nest. Female chasing of mates intensifies when female begins courting new male on her territory. Males fight intensely when there is a shortage of mates or to gain access to a particular female. Males also fight to defend their young and the area the chicks inhabit. Danger to chicks from unrelated adults is severe; chick skulls were fractured in 2 of 10 attacks by neighboring individuals.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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This chasing behavior lasted for 24 minutes after I photographed the mating sandpipers with only a couple of very brief pauses. Eventually I figured I’d taken more than enough photos so while they were still going at it I left the area to look for other birds.<\/p>\n

But it was great fun for that 24 minutes<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Note: In Spotted Sandpipers sexes are very similar with only slight differences so it’s possible that in this post I’ve referred to a male that was actually a female, or vice versa. The fact that females sometimes chase males makes such an error on my part even more likely.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While watching the sexual and pugnacious antics of these sandpipers I described the situation as a “sex circus” to my shooting companion. Not far from the truth if you ask me.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,334,394,391,1610],"tags":[1612,1365,5823,1016,5824,1611,311],"class_list":["post-99939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-oddities","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-nesting-and-mating","category-spotted-sandpipers","tag-actitis-macularia","tag-aggressive-behavior","tag-chasing-and-fighting","tag-mating","tag-single-raised-wing-after-mating","tag-spotted-sandpiper","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/solitary-sandpiper-6123-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-pZV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}