Spotted Sandpiper

Spotted Sandpipers breed across most of Canada and the northern half of the United States. They winter from southern United States to southern South America. With their spotted underparts, breeding-plumaged Spotted Sandpipers are easily identified. In any plumage, their teetering tail bobbing and jerky wing beats are good clues to their identity. Reed et al. (2013) report a number of folk names, due to the tail bobbing—“teeter-peep, teeter-bob, jerk or perk bird, teeter-snipe, and tip-tail.”

When it comes of habitat selection, Spotted Sandpipers are generalists. Mostly they just need some sort of shoreline. This bird is foraging in algae along a bay next to Rockport, Texas, in late March.