[TN-Bird] Baird's Sandpiper, Horned Lark (Greene Co., TN)

24 May 2003
intersection Highway 349 / Pate's Hill Road
Greene County

As we birded our way west on Highway 349 (Warrensburg Road) this
afternoon, Alice Loftin and I stopped to scan the area along Pate's Hill
Road at its intersection with 349 and found a delightful surprise: four
Baird's Sandpipers feeding along the grassy margins of low-lying
portions of the field.  As soon as I saw the birds from the car, I knew
they were Calidrids but not peeps (they were obviously too large).  Of
course I was thinking White-rumped Sandpiper, which is much more likely
in our area in spring, but as I was zeroing in on them with binos, they
took flight and wheeled right past us.  As they turned, I saw the dark
bar on the rumps of all four birds and heard one bird vocalize.  The
call was a low volume trill with a lot of long "e" sound, somewhat like
the common flight call of Least Sandpiper but lower in pitch, less
forceful, and less drawn out.  Later I compared it to the Baird's
Sandpiper vocalizations found in the second edition of A Field Guide to
Western Bird Songs in the Peterson series and found that it was an
almost perfect match to the trill that follows the loud "kreep" call on
the tape.

This is one of my most surprising observations in the ten years that
I've been birding in Greene County.  Baird's Sandpipers are one of the
rarest birds on the county list and are seldom seen anytime, let alone
in spring.  I was fortunate enough to get a few additional looks at the
birds as they fed in two grassy areas near some feral Mallards and
Canada Geese.  The most obvious detail that I observed was the pale
(buff) head and neck, which contrasted noticeably with the darker
feathers on the back.

Also present in the same field were a Solitary Sandpiper and at least
three Horned Larks.  The larks were singing from several locations and
moving about in the drier areas of the field, occasionally bounding into
the air with buoyant flight.

This area is near the spot where I found a singing male Horned Lark a
couple of years ago in early June.  If the species is nesting in Greene
County, I suspect it might be somewhere in this region, as few other
areas offer typical lark habitat.

Don Miller
Greeneville, TN

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