Lisa M. Smith writes:

(snip)
>Bob Thomas wrote: "I recently noted an unusual feeding behavior in
> Piping Plovers. . . They would reach out with a foot and agitate the
> wet sand, then quickly stick their beaks in to search for food.
> Have any of you noticed this behavior using the foot? In any other
> shore birds?"

Species I've seen using deliberate one-foot drumming/paddling are Killdeer,
both Pacific and American Golden Plovers, Black-bellied Plover, Semipalmated
Plover, Bonaparte's Gull, Mew Gull, and, once, Common Snipe. Always in wet
mud --less usually, wet sand-- near or at the edge of the retreating tide
line, or in mud puddles.

I've heard of American Robins doing this, usually with the footnote that the
surface drumming fools any worms or other critters living in the soil into
thinking it's the sound of rain, and they rise to the surface where the
robin picks them off.

Once, we watched a northbound (Week 1, April) Ruff at the Reifel Refuge as
it agitated the very shallow water in which it was standing by a sustained
weird 'outboard motor' rapid kicking with one leg that raised quite a
roostertail, after which it would feed.

Two-foot 'running-in-place' species include Bonaparte's, Mew, Ring-billed,
and California Gulls (Franklin's, too?), Lesser and Greater Yellowlegs,
Green-winged, Blue-winged, and Cinnamon Teals, and Mallard. I've not seen
Gadwall or Pintail do this.

Michael Price
Vancouver BC Canada
mprice at mindlink.net