If you’ve ever watched the aerial ballet of Dunlins evading a Peregrine Falcon or massive flocks of Red Knots feeding on the eggs of horseshoe crabs, or tiny Piping Plover chicks stamping their feet to stir up snacks, you know this already.
As a group, shorebirds offer some of the most delightful and awe-inspiring spectacles in nature. Their diversity, intelligence, expert navigational skills, social behavior, and impressive evolutionary adaptations can be utterly breathtaking.
Check out our shorebirding calendar below or read on for reasons to go shorebirding.
So why do some birders quake in their waders at the thought of going shorebirding? Let us count some of the ways…
Many shorebirds look a lot alike — especially the “peeps” (small sandpipers), which have the habit of spooking and flying off just when you get your binoculars focused. (True story, we double-checked all of the IDs on this page but can’t say we aren’t expecting corrections…)
To ID them, you often need long looks. You need to see them move around or, ideally feed. And you would welcome a peep or whistleso you could ask Merlin. And forget it if you have a smudge on your binoculars.
LEAST SANDPIPER (Getty Images)
Shorebird ID can involve often tiny structural details and plumage differences. No lie—it’s easy to lose one’s enthusiasm when the conversation turns to degrees of bill droop, scapular patterns, covert edgings, and primary projections.
To add to the fun, shorebird plumage changes dramatically. Many species look totally different in breeding, non-breeding, and juvenile plumages. This means you’re often dealing with multiple versions of the same species in the same flock at the same time—and worse, multiple species that all look alike in the fall. Fun times!
GREATER YELLOWLEGS (Getty Images)
What makes shorebirding especially exciting is the more-possible-than-not possibility of a rarity showing up like a Sharp-tailed Sandpiper, or a vagrant Common Plover, or even a Curlew Sandpiper, causing all the phones to ping.
But there is also particular FOMO that comes with these occasions. Shorebirding can be a giant visual pattern recognition game. If you’re looking for a Baird’s Sandpiper in the “peep soup,” it’s easy to feel inadequate. And then, if you miss something or misidentify a common bird as something unusual, it can make you want to hang up your binoculars.
Shorebirding humbles everyone.
Did we mention the conditions? Greenheads. Mosquito swarms. Blazing sun. Brisk offshore winds that are more like gales than breezes. Sand blasting around. Sunscreen dripping into your eyes. Tick panics. A salt marsh with a particularly redolent aroma, Mud that sucks your shoes right off. Not being able to see anything, especially at a distance, when heat shimmers distort your view. Is it worth it? (Spoiler alert: yes, it is!)
An intimidating culture of expertise swirls around shorebirding, and that can be off-putting. Some shorebirders get into long discussions about molt patterns, regional plumage differences, and leg length ratios. It can seem as if nothing about shorebirds is intuitive. But the fact is, even experienced birders admit they start over every August.
Be not afraid. Have fun instead.
Then, there’s the phenomenon of “scope shaming.” Sort of like not having the right sneakers in middle school. Sometimes, it can be hard to see these birds without a spotting scope, and beginners often feel sidelined or unsure of what they’re supposed to be seeing. Fact: a $5K scope does not automatically make you a better birder. Most birders are happy to offer you a look through their long lens. And some relatively inexpensive bridge cameras offer a very serviceable substitute.
If you haven’t spent a few hours watching shorebirds, sign up for a shorebird trip. Let us persuade you that they are more than worth your time.
Birders like to know what they are seeing. But what works for some does not work for others—we all notice something different. Some of us learn songs or calls, others learn shapes and sizes. Some focus on details, and some just have a knack for identifying birds by what they are doing. Shorebirds can be identified by any of these methods.
This free app, a labor of love from local birders, will help you look at New England shorebirds in a kind of multidimensional way. We think it’s fantastic!
Scan or click the link and then follow the instructions for adding it to your phone or Android. It’s a web app, so as long as you have internet access, you’ll be able to explore.
For beginner shorebirding, there’s nothing better!
We’re thrilled to share the New England Shorebird Guide with you—contents created by Soheil Zendeh, edited by Marsha Salett, web app by Eric Swanzey, and hosted at Bird Observer. The free guide comes in a web app for your phone with a wealth of info for IDing New England shorebirds.
Need help figuring out how to add it as an app to your iPhone or Android? We’ve got you. See instructions below.
How to Add a Web App to iPhone Home Screen
1. Scan the QR code.
2. Open the link in Safari.
3. Tap the Share icon.
It’s the square with an upward arrow at the bottom of the Safari screen.
4. Scroll and tap “Add to Home Screen.”
5. Edit the name if you want, then tap Add.
How to Add the Shorebird Guide to Your Android Home Screen
Scan the QR code using your Android camera (or a QR scanner app).
The browser (like Chrome) should open the Shorebird Guide URL.
Look for a blue banner across the bottom or:
Tap the ⋮ menu (top right in Chrome),
Select “Add to Home screen” or “Install app.”
Give it a title (default is fine) and tap Add.
You’ll now see an app icon on your home screen—just tap it to open the guide directly, even offline if supported.
Shorebirds as a group are masters of long-distance migration, built for speed, efficiency, and pinpoint accuracy. Bar-tailed Godwits, for example, fly nonstop from Alaska to New Zealand in 8–11 days—the longest known nonstop flight by any bird.
During peak migration, a single New England mudflat or salt marsh can host as many as 15+ species of shorebirds in a single day—all of them feeding, resting, and refueling together. Before a long migration, some shorebirds nearly double their body weight, storing fat as fuel for the journey.
Red Knots time their migration to match horseshoe crab egg hatches, then stop to gorge on the eggs during their 9,000+ mile journey from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego in South America.
The beautiful American Golden-Plover flies at speeds over 60 mph in migration.
Hudsonian Godwits fly higher than many shorebirds, reaching altitudes of over 16,000+ feet.
Migrating shorebirds like this Black-bellied Plover use the Earth’s magnetic field to navigate incredible distances with pinpoint accuracy.
From slender bills shaped to probe specific microhabitats for specific prey, to legs designed for wading in surf and marsh, shorebirds are perfectly adapted for life in dynamic coastal habitats.
Many have highly sensitive nerve endings in their bills to detect prey by touch, and others can drink saltwater thanks to specialized glands. Their flight muscles and energy metabolism are also highly developed, giving them high aerobic capacity and the ability and store large amounts of fat to fuel nonstop migrations of thousands of miles.
Shorebirds, like this Whimbrel, can rewire their brains for migration. During migratory season, shorebirds’ brains grow spatial memory centers (like the hippocampus) to help with route-finding and recall of stopover sites—then shrink them afterward. It’s seasonal neuroplasticity.
Shorebird feather patterns involve structural coloration—light refracted in microstructures, not just pigment. This is particularly visible in fresh fall feathers of species like this Stilt Sandpiper.
STILT SANDPIPER (Mark Peck)
Some shorebirds, like this Short-billed Dowitcher have bills packed with nerve cells, known as Herbst corpuscles. Shorebirds use these cells detect and assess vibrations, pressure, and the movement of prey underground, and many shorebirds can flex the tips of their bills.
Some studies suggest shorebirds, like this Black-bellied Plover possess magnetoreceptors—iron-based crystals in their upper bills— to navigate with GPS-like precision. They literally read the planet.
Healthy, dynamic mudflats and sandy beaches are vital for coastal resilience against storms, flooding, and erosion. Shorebirds play a key role as “Ecosystem engineers” by modify their environment in ways that affect other organisms and landscape processes, and help maintain the structure, fertility, and biodiversity of coasts and mudflats.
As they forage and poop across hemispheres, shorebirds carry and redistribute unique gut microbes across ecosystems—playing a quiet but critical role in coastal microbiome health.
Shorebirds constant probing, pecking, and stomping churns up mudflats and beaches, aerating the sediment and hard sand. Sandpipers also contribute to nutrient cycling, and help to maintain healthy microbial and invertebrate communities.
Because they rely on healthy wetlands, mudflats, and beaches, shorebirds are reliable bioindicators of how habitat loss, pollution, run off, sea level rise, water quality and temperature rise, climate instability, etc. are affecting the general health of local ecosystems.
Many shorebird species return to the same roost sites year after year. Some areas are so consistently used that they form unique microhabitats defined by shorebird roosting sites and walking paths that direct water flow and dune features. In Massachusetts, examples of shorebird engineering include the Salt Pannes at Parker River and South Beach in Chatham.
What can we say? Who can resist such a floofy fluffernutter?
Some shorebirds rely on cryptic coloration to hide their nests and eggs. Their chicks, like those in this Piping Plover family, are also camouflaged. Pale feathers with streaks of sandy brown make them difficult to see unless they’re moving.
American Oystercatcher chicks are precocial—they can walk and follow their parents almost immediately after hatching. But baby oystercatchers still need mom and dad to feed them until their bills grow long and strong enough. Adults use their bills to pry open mollusks and deliver soft morsels to their chicks.
Semipalmated Plover chicks are independent foragers right after hatching, ready to snap up any invertebrates they can find. These chicks grow fast: within 3–4 weeks, they’re able to fly and will start migrating south not long after.
Some shorebirds, as well as seabirds like Least Terns, nest in little scrapes among the rocks and gravel on the beach, relying on cryptic coloration to hide their eggs.
While we’re mostly focusing on shorebirds of the New England coasts, the fact is, you can regularly find a variety of shorebird species in woodlands, freshwater wetlands and mudflats, and farm fields. Inland shorebirds are many and various, and during the fall migration, first-year shorebirds usually seen along the coast also show up in surprising inland locations.
The Spotted Sandpiper is famous for its constant teetering and bobbing its tail up and down as it forages in woodlands and along water edges. Females are larger, more aggressive, while the males care for the young.
A member of the plover family, Killdeer are famous for their “broken-wing act”—they fake an injury to lure predators away from their nest. They’ll flutter along the ground, calling loudly, until the danger is far from their eggs.
Upland Sandpipers prefer hayfields to wetlands. Once widespread across eastern North America, their numbers dropped due to agriculture and habitat loss, but conservation of tallgrass prairie and grassland bird initiatives have helped stabilize some populations. In Massachusetts, Upland Sandpiper is listed as Endangered and a Species of Greatest Conservation Need.
The Solitary Sandpiper is usually bobbing at the edges of quiet ponds and forested wetlands. It’s one of the only shorebirds in the world that nests in trees! It uses old songbird nests, especially those built by robins or jays.
Shorebirds, with their long migrations, specialized diets and habitats, sensitivity to disturbance, and preferences for beautiful beaches and shorelines also favored by real estate developers, face many different kinds of threats from habitat loss, to plastic entanglements, climate change, water pollution, and more. When towns remove seaweed from beaches for tourists, shorebirds usually pay the price.
Conservation efforts that are proactive, science-driven, informed by data, and collaborative across many borders can ensure that these beautiful birds continue to thrive. Public education and community leadership are also critical for protecting shorebirds.
Shorebirds are exceptionally good indicators of environmental health— a clear signal of ecological stress, health, and resilience. By protecting the habitats they need, we’re also preserving the natural systems that support clean water, flood control, and biodiversity.
Once critically endangered, Piping Plovers have seen some population rebounds along the Atlantic coast. Successful strategies include fencing, nest exclosures, predator control, seasonal beach closures, and public education. Massachusetts, in particular, has successfully increased Piping Plover numbers over the past two decades.
Feral cats prey on eggs, chicks, and adult birds, particularly vulnerable ground-nesting shorebirds like Piping Plovers, Least Terns, Killdeer, and American Oystercatchers. The presence of cats—even if they don’t catch anything—leads to less time feeding or brooding, increased stress, and vigilance. In Massachusetts, feral cats have a history of forming colonies along shorelines, posing an ongoing threat to shorebirds.
The International Shorebird Survey (ISS) tracks shorebird populations across the Western Hemisphere—especially during migration. Founded in 1974 by Manomet, the survey organizes volunteers to conduct shorebird counts at designated wetlands, beaches, and mudflats across North, Central, and South America. The survey provides long-term, large-scale data for research and conservation programs throughout the hemisphere.
One more thing? Shorebirding takes place in some of the most beautiful wild areas in New England. Let shorebirds be a reason to take a day off, spend a summer evening at a beautiful beach, or traipse a boardwalk through a salt marsh where tight flocks of peeping birds whizz around you. Watch the sun set on a flock of Dowitchers or Sanderlings racing the waves.
The Shorebirding Celebration schedule is up on our website with new events being added regularly. We’ll announce trips on Instagram, but conditions do change rapidly, so be sure to check back! See you out there.