Spotted Sandpiper: Look more closely at these pictures, it's almost like this little wading bird has hearts on it. This bird has been showing well all weekend and I held my nerve for when I was working down this way after the Bank Holidays.
Grafham Water is England's third biggest reservoir nestled in 1500 acres of bucolic countryside, but thankfully the bird kept to a small area of the vegetated bankside called the Plumer Park.
With the exception of its heavily spotted breast, spotted sandpiper are very similar in appearance and habit to our common sandpiper. They have distinct spots on their belly during their summer plumage stage and the adults have yellowish legs, an orange bill, and brown on top with black spots underneath.
The Spotted Sandpiper breeds near fresh water across most of North America where it essentially replaces our Common Sandpiper. It is the most widespread breeding Sandpiper in North America. They migrate to the southern United States, the Caribbean and South America for the winter and are rare vagrants to western Europe.
Very much like the common sandpiper they also bob up and down, bobbing their tail up and down while feeding. The function of the sandpiper tail-bobbing is unknown with guesses ranging from the mildly plausible such as aiding in balancing on rough terrain to the absurd such as pumping body oils over their feathers to improve waterproofing.
