Least Sandpiper

About the Least Sandpiper

The smallest sandpiper in the world - a bird you could mail with two stamps - and the one with the yellow-green legs. That single mark separates it from the other look-alike peeps, whose legs run black, though mud on the legs has fooled more than a few birders.

Least Sandpipers hug the drier, grassier edge of the mudflat, crouching low as they pick, while the Westerns and Semipalmateds wade the wetter middle. The crouch is characteristic: where other peeps trot upright, a Least works hunched, almost creeping, and its browner, more patterned back blends into the drying mud it prefers.

For a bird that weighs less than an ounce, the travel schedule is absurd - breeding on subarctic tundra and wintering from the southern U.S. to Chile, with some individuals crossing open ocean on multi-day nonstop flights. The birds probing a Central Texas pond edge in October may have hatched within sight of Hudson Bay.

They tolerate a slow, low approach better than most shorebirds, which makes them a fine subject for working on eye-level shorebird photography. Lie in the mud; the pictures are worth the laundry.