Subject: [Tweeters] UPLAND SANDPIPER near Acme (Whatcom Co.), August 11
Date: Aug 12 01:08:37 2005
From: Wayne C. Weber - contopus at telus.net


Tweeters,

Yesterday evening, August 11, at 9:15 PM, just as it was getting dark, I
heard but did not see an UPLAND SANDPIPER near Acme, just east of State
Highway 9. The exact location was along Homesteader Road, 0.5 miles east of
Highway 9, and 0.25 miles east of its junction with Standard Road. On the
DeLorme Atlas, Homesteader Road is not named, but is an E-W road just above
the name "Standard" (for the small community by that name) on the map.
It is located 2 miles north of Acme and 3 miles south of Van Zandt.

The bird was flying overhead, and I heard it call, not far away, six times
within about a minute. I would describe the call as a liquid "qui-di-dit",
with the second and third notes a bit lower-pitched than the first.
(Although
the flight call of the Upland Sandpiper is often described as 4-noted,
it sounds distinctly 3-noted to me.) This call, to me at least, is utterly
distinctive, and not to be confused with any other bird vocalizations.
I am quite familiar with this call, which I have heard before from Upland
Sandpipers when I observed them in BC, the Yukon, Alberta, Oregon,
Idaho, South Dakota, Ontario, and eastern Washington (back in the days
when they bred in the Spokane Valley). Roger Tory Peterson says of this
call, "often heard at night".

>From the apparent locations of the calls, the bird seemed to be circling
about rather than flying in a straight line. The last time I heard the bird
was the closest--no more than 200 feet away, I would say. The bird may
well have landed in the extensive fields north of Homesteader Road.
I doubt that it will remain in the area-- it was undoubtedly an early fall
migrant-- but some of you keeners may want to look for it in the morning.

Upland Sandpipers are very rare fall migrants in Washington. Wahl et al. in
"Birds of Washington" list only 13 fall migration records, 8 from west of
the Cascades, and 5 from east of them. The species' migration tends to
peak in late August, so this one is on the early side, although there are
a couple of late July records.

For the record, I recorded two Upland Sandpipers on the same day-- August
30, 1985-- at two different localities in the Okanagan Valley of southern
BC. One bird was seen well, and heard calling, in the morning of that day
as it flew over the Coldstream Ranch feedlot near Vernon, BC. Later the
same day (just about nightfall, as with the Acme bird), I heard another
(or the same?) Upland Sandpiper near the north end of Osoyoos Lake,
as it was flying southward. It may be that, if more birders knew the flight
call of the Upland Sandpiper, it would be recorded more often as a fall
migrant in Washington and southern BC.

In case anyone is wondering what I was doing in the Acme area (my first
visit ever to that renowned Washington birding hotspot), I was hoping to
find Common Nighthawks and/or owls, and an Upland Sandpiper was the
last thing I was expecting. However, at the same spot as the sandpiper on
Homesteader Road, I did see two BARN OWLS, which repeatedly passed
overhead during a period of 15 minutes or so, and approached quite closely
when I "spished" and made some noises with my bird squeaker.

I realize that, as I did not see the Upland Sandpiper but only heard it,
this observation may not meet the standards used by Terry Wahl for a new
species for the county list, or for the Washington Bird Records Committee
for an acceptable record. (I'm not sure if Upland Sandpiper is actually on
the Review List of the Records Committee, as it was a regular breeding
species for decades in the Spokane area, until the early 1990s.) However,
as I didn't see the bird, a detailed description of the voice is the best I
can do!

Wayne C. Weber
Delta, BC
contopus at telus.net