THE LONG-BILLED DOWITCHER
by
Walter L. Meagher
Photos by Wayne Colony
The Long-billed Dowitcher is the Pinocchio of shorebirds. Quiet and still, it is a model for a woodcraft artist chiselling its long legs in balance with its long bill.
Dowitchers, of all species, are called ‘shorebirds’; so too are sandpipers and the American Avocet. Some of these birds, including Dowitchers, are also called ‘waders’. But most sandpipers are not waders - this is a confusion for which I am not responsible. We can make this distinction: the Long-billed Dowitcher is a freshwater bird, attending ponds and lakes; its cousin, the Curve-billed Dowitcher, winters at estuarial marshes along the Pacific Coast in California.
Calm is the life of the freshwater waders compared to sandpipers at the ocean shore. Respectful and wary of the force of the incoming wave, sandpipers run up the strand ahead of the dissolving foam; when the water turns, like the inhaling bellow of an organ, they chase the water, gobbling crustaceans at its edge.
The Dowitcher has a calmer life. It bends down its head as if it were a seismographic instrument. I have never seen a Dowitcher contemplate the sky or review the heavens. The bird’s nature is geotropic: it has a permanent relationship with something under the soil, something buried, something its bill is designed to find and pry loose.
Dowitchers feed in shallow water and near the water’s edge, on the muddy flat. In each habitat, their method of feeding is the same; on the muddy flat we can more easily see how they search for food. I say ‘search’ knowing the bird cannot see the prey it is looking for; not like a falcon, who can see the duck it will attack, not like the Vermilion Flycatcher, who darts from its perch only when it clearly sees the insect it is going to snap up. The Dowitcher probes the mud, like a blind man, making hole after hole, in a motion so energetic it has been likened to a sewing machine. What is it looking for? Is this a sensible way to ‘hunt’?
Dowitchers feed on crustaceans, polychaete worms, leaf fragments and detritus. We don’t know much about the finer points of its diet, but we are sure the world is a better place for having crustaceans. I like lobster and large shrimps. What crustaceans does the Dowitcher like?
Consider this dynamic relationship between predator and prey: the bill has to be long enough to reach the prey and the prey have to find a way to live at a greater depth than the bill can reach. The bill has to find prey in some significant ratio of empty holes to holes successfully dug. The bill may have (it has been said that it does have) sensitive nerve endings allowing it to detect a polychaete worm in its burrow.
Bird migration is astonishing; even a trip to LA or NYC is a chore. The Long-billed Dowitcher is at home where there are no trees, wet grass, marsh and shallow lakes - in a word, 2,500 km north in the tundra of Canada, above the boreal tree line, across the Arctic tundra into eastern Siberia. In desolate food-rich places they breed, nest, lay eggs, raise young, feed young, show them how to dig holes and how to feed for themselves. One day, between July and September, an entire population of Long-billed Dowitchers fly south. Some land in El Charco, and stay for several months. The wood craftsman, now with paintbrush in hand, adds that strong white eyebrow line that unmistakeably identifies the Dowitcher for us.