Double, Double

By Keith Michael

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Godwit’s wing and Phal’rope’s feet,
Dow’tcher’s eye and Whimbrel’s beak,
Egret’s plume and Heron’s tail,
Plover’s toe and Av’cet’s nail,
For a charm of powerful trouble
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Macbeth IV.i (recast)
William Shakespeare

Okay, I know that’s forcing Shakespeare’s rhythm and rhyme, but this incantation captures the spirit of fall shorebird season for me. Whenever I board the A train heading to Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge in Queens to walk the mudflats of the East Pond in knee-high boots, I feel like I may end up in Tolkien’s Middle Earth—the haunt of Godwit and Whimbrel, Dowitcher and Phalarope—fanciful creatures of a netherworld.

“Shorebird” refers to any number of usually small, relatively long-legged, cryptically plumaged birds that are most often seen plying the water’s edge. There are more than 30 different kinds of shorebirds that one can reasonably expect to see each season as they pass through the wetlands of New York City on migration. Herons, egrets, gulls, ducks, and geese can also be seen “by the shore,” but the more diminutive shorebirds are the ones that snag my imagination.

As reference, perhaps the most familiar shorebird is the Sanderling, that palm-sized, white and gray bird one sees at the beach, always scurrying at the frothy edge of incoming or receding waves, picking up fast food from the sand. After those perpetual motion machines, their next most common relatives are the various sandpipers and plovers.

All of these birds primarily nest in the northern tundra of Canada and Alaska, and are headed to South America for our winter. Every time that I see one of these diligent waders, I think about how far they must have flown to get here, how many thousands of miles they still have to fly, and how much they have to eat to get where they’re going. It all seems unfathomable. 

The more common contestants for my attention are the Semi-palmated Sandpipers and Plovers. The “semi-palmated” part of their names means that they have partially webbed feet. The Sandpipers have a slimmer silhouette than the Sanderlings, and the Plovers are miniature incarnations of Killdeers (if you know what they are) but with only one black band across their chests rather than the Killdeer’s two. Willets and Yellowlegs are both significantly taller but can easily be confused with each other. The Willet is brawnier with a thicker bill, and the Yellowlegs, helpfully, do have yellow legs—though there is a Lesser and a Greater Yellowlegs to keep you entertained, and doubting yourself, while trying to identify them.

I like Dowitchers. There are Short- and Long-billed ones. Confusingly, they both have extremely long bills, so don’t get bogged down in differentiating between them. We mostly see the Short-billed ones. They are a “swallowed-a-grapefruit” shaped bird, mid-height, generally seen in groups, and they have a signature feeding style of bobbing their long bills straight up and down in the mud like a sewing machine. If you think about it, how do they tell what’s edible, or not, buried down in the muck? Remarkably, they have sensors at the ends of those sword-like bills that help them find the delicacies. Additional fun fact: the tips of their bills are slightly prehensile. This means that just the ends can open and close to pluck amuse bouche from the mud. That’s decidedly cool—though it still seems to me like reaching around in the dark under the refrigerator to find a snack. I confess, I really think that, mostly, I just like their name: Dowitcher.

The superstars of the late-summer/early-fall are the Phalaropes and the Godwits. Only a few show up each season which revs up the excitement. In August 2013, a Red-necked Phalarope graced the West Village for a morning, spinning in the pile field just north of Hudson River Park’s Pier 40. I say “spinning” because this delicate bird’s dining strategy is to create a vortex at the water’s surface to draw tidbits into its feast. Phalaropes are also iconoclastic because they are one of the few birds whose females have flashier plumage than the males. You go girls!

And Godwits? What’s their claim to fame? Godwits hold the world record for long-distance non-stop migration. In October 2022, B6, a four-month-old Bar-tailed Godwit flew non-stop for 11 days, from Alaska to Tasmania, a total of 8,425 miles! I think that counts as avian royalty. A few Hudsonian or Marbled Godwits occasionally layover in NYC to break up their 10,000-mile flight to southern Argentina. Getting to witness these world class athletes on their pit stop is the best show in town.

Seeing a peachy, up-swept billed American Avocet would be icing on an already sweet cake.

I just heard that there may be Whimbrels on the beach at Fort Tilden, Queens. Gotta go!