Bird Lore: Surfbird

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The Surfbird, a medium-sized gray shorebird, winters along rocky shorelines pounded by surf. The only rocky shoreline in Edmonds is the marina’s breakwater. In recent history, a birder saw a Surfbird on the breakwater in September 1999. There was no subsequent documented sighting until August 2013 when another showed up briefly one day. Then in early December 2014, another birder spotted a Surfbird along the breakwater. Since then there have been a number of sightings and now a small group of six birds are being seen daily, from the pier, on the breakwater. These birds stay on the lowest exposed rocks as they forage. They can be detected by looking for movement or the flash of gray and white on their wings as they fly-hop from rock to rock. If you try to see them, check a tide table and look for a time as the tide is ebbing or when it is a few hours before high tide.

In winter, the Surfbird sports slate gray plumage on its upper parts, a gray-bibbed breast, and a white belly with lightly-spotted flanks. It has a round body, a neckless head, a blunt-tipped bill, and short, sturdy yellowish legs. It can be found along the West Coast in winter, from British Columbia to California, but as far south as southern Chile. It is among the narrowest of winter ranges because it extends inland only a few yards above the tide line. The Surfbird is a fairly tame sandpiper that will allow close approach. But the closest you will get to these birds is to view them from the public pier. Bring binoculars.

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The Surfbird eats insects, mollusks and barnacles. It removes barnacles, limpets, and young mussels from rocks with a quick sideways jerk of its head and swallows them whole. Its thick bill is adapted for this behavior. In summer, when on its tundra nesting territory, it eats mostly insects and some seeds.

Breeding behavior is not well known. The Surfbird nests on rocky tundra above tree line in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Territory. The nest site is on the ground in a natural depression in rock on a high, dry ridge, surrounded by low ground cover. The pair lines the depression with dead leaves, moss and lichens. There are typically four eggs incubated by both parents for an unknown number of days. The young leave the nest soon after hatching. Although both parents tend them, the young find their own food.

The Surfbird is an uncommon sandpiper. There are few data on its population, but it appears to be stable so it has been assigned a conservation status of least concern.

Usually a silent bird, the Surfbird sometimes makes a “churt” call when flushed. You can hear it from a flock of several hundred birds at this site: https://www.xeno-canto.org/134486.

— By Carol Riddell

Carol Riddell manages the bird education displays, on behalf of Pilchuck Audubon Society and Edmonds Parks & Recreation, at the Olympic Beach Visitor Station.

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