Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - The ritual of searching for buff-breasted sandpipers in the Coastal Bend

Marketplace \| Services \| Contact Us \| Community \| Arts & Entertainment \| Local Guides

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Tuesday, August 29, 2000

The ritual of searching for buff-breasted sandpipers in the Coastal Bend
Keeping a journal of birding findings is also a nice ritual, Yochem finds when looking through entries from '70s

According to "Webster's Third," a ritual is any practice done or regularly repeated in a set, precise manner so as to satisfy one's sense of fitness and often felt to have a symbolic significance. I believe that rituals are the bones of our social being.
   Therefore, every Aug. 19, or soon after, a longtime birding friend and I go in search of buff-breasted sandpipers. In one of my earliest, spottily kept birding journals, I recorded the first time we found them.
   "Friday, Aug. 24, 1973. Ginni and I went to Flour Bluff for shrimp and on Rodd Field Road, in a field being plowed, we got a large flock of buff-breasted sandpipers. 100 plus."
   What I remember was that we were so excited we tried to run across the furrows to get closer to the birds. Have you ever tried to run across a recently plowed field?
   A buff-breasted sandpiper is a small, buffy shorebird with a short bill, light eye ring and yellowish legs. It resembles a miniature upland sandpiper, long-necked and small-headed. In flight, white, almost silvery, wing linings contrast with buffy bodies as members of a flock rise simultaneously from a field. They always seem to position themselves as far as possible from easy birder access, selecting the farthest, most unreachable corner of any field.
   Connie Hagar, the Bird Lady of Rockport, put buff-breasted sandpipers on the South Texas bird list. It took her several years to convince the East Coast birders, most of whom wrote the field guides of her time, that her observation was true.
   Kay McCracken, in her book "Connie Hagar, the Life History of a Texas Birdwatcher," tells of Hagar taking Guy Emerson, mentor of Roger Tory Peterson, on a field trip where, "in a wet field, feeding placidly, marching about with heads up and unafraid within a stone's throw of the car were more than 40 buff-breasts, far more than the total number seen by birders on the east coast in his (Emerson's) lifetime." His comment was that nobody up there was going to believe this.
   My journal written Aug. 23, 1974, says, "We found at Flour Bluff two buff-breasted individuals, in uncharacteristic pose, drinking."
   In some years we have not been able to find any buff-breasteds. Other years the entries in my journal are sporadic. On Aug. 21, 1977, we again found them at the pond (on Caribbean) in Flour Bluff. On Aug. 8, 1986, (early) Kay McCracken and I saw a flock of them off Saratoga Boulevard, near Chapman Ranch Road with, according to my journal, pectoral sandpipers.
   On Aug. 19, 1990, we searched for them along the road running parallel to Interstate-35, north of Portland.
   "We finally found some upland sandpipers and, in trying to get closer to them, found a flock of buff-breasteds. This was out of Portland and before coming to Gregory. Great!"
   On Aug. 20 this year, in the same place, we heard and saw upland sandpipers but so far no buff-breasteds. We found an unexpected sign of fall, a flock of at least 10 eastern kingbirds. While writing this column, it has been almost as much fun searching through my old journals as it is looking for birds. Keeping a journal is a ritual too. If you don't already keep a record of your birds, you might want to think about starting one.


Phyllis Yochem, a Corpus Christi resident, has studied birds of Texas since 1960.

| Discuss about birdwatching | | Home |

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

[ Printer-friendly version ]
[ Subscribe to newspaper ]

SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND

[an error occurred while processing this directive]