Sleeping Godwits

Along the Pacific coast, near San Diego, my birding group ran across this flock of sleeping shorebirds. The flock was mostly marbled godwits with a few dowitchers and a willet thrown in.

Our group tallied 100 species in our Birds Along the Border field trip. If you've never attended the San Diego Bird Festival, take it from me, it's a good one! It's amazing how many birds you can find when you've got ocean, freshwater sloughs, mountains, desert, and lush spring vegetation all in abundance.

Oh My Godwits

This marbled godwit's nest was somewhere along the roadside. S/he was kind enough to escort our van down the road a piece.

One special shorebird that breeds in North Dakota is the marbled godwit. I'm always pleased to encounter this large, chunky-yet-graceful bird with the two-toned, upcurved bill on my annual NoDak trip. Last week at the Potholes and Prairie Birding Festival I had two close encounters of the godwit kind: one near Pingree and one farther to the west, in Kidder County. Here are some images from both.

Female godwits have the longer bill of the two sexes. This is probably a male.

One of the marbled godwit's best field marks is the cinnamon in the wings. Not literally of course.

Godwits eat seasonally. In summer it's grasshoppers and insects on the prairies.
During winter they probe mudflats and sandbars for mollusks and crustaceans.

We did not venture off the road or even get out of our van. Still, the godwits cursed our souls for trespassing.

Later that week in a field full of photographers, sparrows, and longspurs, this godwit made a fly-by just to check us out.

Its nest was at least a quarter mile away. But we stood out like sore thumbs standing on the prairie, so the godwit came over for a look-see.

The marbled godwit's two-toned bill is fairly obvious even from a long distance.