Birds on the shore

Sanderling at Chincoteague

During the boreal winter, Sanderling can be found on most sandy beaches in the Western Hemisphere. Their biggest numbers are in coastal Chile and Peru, where in the 1980s my team and I banded thousands of them.

We set up teams during north and southbound migration to monitor for banded birds. It became clear that birds from the same winter beach can take very different paths northward, where they nest in the High Arctic. One bird we banded in Chile went north along the Pacific Coast. It was seen at the mouth of the Columbia River in spring. And then in the fall it was spotted on Cape Cod.

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