Sanderling

About the Sanderling

The Sanderling is the little wind-up toy of the winter beach - a small, very pale sandpiper, silvery gray above and snow white below, famous for sprinting down the slope of the beach behind a retreating wave and racing back up ahead of the next one on a blur of black legs.

That wave-chasing game is serious feeding: each retreating wave exposes tiny crustaceans and marine worms for a second or two, and the Sanderling's quick probes are timed to that window. Few people realize the bird digesting breakfast on a Texas beach nested on high-arctic tundra and may winter as far south as Patagonia - Sanderlings are among the longest-distance migrants of any shorebird.

In Texas, Sanderlings are present on sandy Gulf beaches most of the year, from returning failed breeders in July through late spring departure in May, with only a brief midsummer gap when the adults are on the tundra.