Something to think about (assuming you don't have any work to do!!):

I've also been doing some Upland Sandpipier research, and (thanks to Kelly
McAllister) came across the summary of sightings in Washington. I put the
data into Excel, totals by year, and graphed them. This interesting plot
shows a fluctuating population from 1-12 individuals from 1954 - 1988,
around a mean of about 4 birds/year (disclaimer: the data are probably
not suitable for any real statistical analyses). The numbers did not
include eggs/hatchlings or westside migrants, I tried to plot numbers of
birds that could be breeding. Now this doesn't look like a huge
population, but it seemed to be stable for that 35 year interval (prior to
1954, annual data were not available and probably not indicative overall
numbers). What happened between summer 1988 and summer 1989 to cause such
a decline? Prior to this, were conditions elsewhere poor, causing
increased numbers here during previous years, and then an exodus when
conditions elsewhere improved (the Washington is only peripheral
hypothesis)? Or was a tremendous mall built that year on a nice spot (the
kill the last good spot hypothesis)? It really seems to be a sudden crash
(from 10 in 1988 to 3 in 1989-91 to 2 in 1992-93 to none in 1994-95).

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Michael R. Smith
Univ. of Washington, Seattle
whimbrel at u.washington.edu
http://salmo.cqs.washington.edu/~wagap/mike.html