Hudsonian Whimbrel

About the Hudsonian Whimbrel

The Hudsonian Whimbrel is the striped-crowned curlew of the Texas coast in migration -- a big, elegant shorebird with a long down-curved bill that is nonetheless clearly shorter than the absurd scythe of a Long-billed Curlew. The bold dark stripes through the crown and eye settle any distant identification.

That decurved bill is a precision instrument: it matches the curve of a fiddler crab burrow, and on Texas flats in April you can watch a whimbrel work a colony methodically, extracting crabs like a tool made for the job -- which it is. Their loud, rippling seven-note whistle carries across the flats and is often the first sign a flock is passing overhead.

Whimbrels breed on Arctic tundra and stage epic nonstop flights -- some cross thousands of miles of open ocean in migration. Texas sees them mostly as a spring passage bird on the coast, with April the peak. This bird was at Bolivar Flats in April 2022, in the same tide-line crowd as the plovers, godwits, and curlews.

Side-by-side moments are the prize: whimbrel and Long-billed Curlew in one frame is the two-species bill lesson every coast photographer wants.