Endless Spring
Summer? Says who? For this White-rumped Sandpiper, this is still the season of spring migration. From the middle of a flooded field in northern Ohio, Kenn writes: After a totally crazy month, the calendar has just clicked over from May -- we call it May-hem around here -- to June. So what season is it now? If you’re a White-rumped Sandpiper, it’s still spring, still the height of northward migration season. Of course, if you’re a White-rumped Sandpiper, you’re probably not reading this blog. If you’re a sandpiper, you’re too busy to read things like this. Especially if you’re a White-rumped. More than three dozen different species of sandpipers are found regularly in North America; all of them are at least somewhat migratory. None of them migrates north later in spring, on average, than the White-rump. This bird has a lot of distance to cover. Its wintering sites are all in southern South America, including some as far south as the tip of the continent -- or even farther: this amazin