All species › Waders, gulls and terns › Sandpipers and snipes › Buff-breasted Sandpiper
Buff-breasted Sandpiper | Calidris subruficollis
Blonde ruiter | Correlimos canelo
The Buff-breasted Sandpiper is a small, buff sandpiper of dry, short grassland that breeds on the Arctic tundra of Alaska and Canada and winters on the pampas of Argentina, Uruguay and southern Brazil. Its migration runs largely through the interior of North and South America, and in the Caribbean it is a scarce passage migrant, mostly in autumn and mainly on the eastern islands.
Voice
Mostly silent; sometimes a soft, low prrrt or a short tik.
Recording: Paul Kelly — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
18–20 cm, with a small, round head, a short, straight black bill, large dark eyes in a plain buff face and bright yellow legs. Upperparts scaly from dark feather centres with pale buff fringes; head, neck and underparts plain warm buff, paler towards the belly, with fine dark spots on the sides of the breast. In flight no wing bar, a dark rump and a white underwing with dark edges; in displaying or stretching birds the white underwing stands out.
Confusion species
Ruff Calidris pugnax is larger, often longer-legged, with a longer, slightly drooping bill and white ovals on the rump. American Golden Plover Pluvialis dominica, which uses the same grasslands, is larger, with a short plover bill and a spangled rather than scaly back. Baird's Sandpiper Calidris bairdii has black legs and long wings.
Habitat
Short grassland, airfields, golf courses, playing fields and turf farms, also the dry, vegetated edges of salt pans and pools; rarely on mud. It feeds by walking and picking like a small plover, often together with golden plovers.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Scarce and irregular. Most records come from Puerto Rico, Aruba, Guadeloupe, Barbados, Bonaire, Trinidad and Tobago, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas; there are scattered records from Curaçao, Grenada, Martinique, Sint Maarten, Hispaniola, Cuba, the Virgin Islands and other islands of the Lesser Antilles. Very rare or unrecorded on Jamaica and many other islands. Beyond the region it breeds in northern Alaska and Arctic Canada and winters in south-eastern South America.
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Short-mown grass at airfields and golf courses on the eastern islands in September, especially after north-easterly winds or showers. Flocks of American Golden Plovers are worth checking. The birds are often quite tame.
Conservation status
Vulnerable globally. The population was greatly reduced by hunting in the 19th and early 20th centuries and now suffers from the loss of natural grassland on the migration route and in the wintering areas. In the region it depends on open, short grassland.
Scientific name
Calidris subruficollis | (Vieillot, 1819)
Vieillot described the species in 1819 as Tringa subruficollis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Calidris was introduced in 1804 by Merrem. Calidris goes back to Ancient Greek kalidris or skalidris, a name Aristotle used for an unidentified grey waterside bird. subruficollis joins Latin subrufus 'reddish' — from sub 'somewhat' and rufus 'rufous' — to collum 'neck'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Paraguay.