‘Piper is playing the tune of love
Few birds have the right to puff out their chests with pumped-up pride quite like the lusty pectoral sandpiper.
So-named because of the attractive markings dotted across its breast, this small wading bird from the tundra has a reputation for phenomenal exploits in the air and on dry land. Besides performing flights worthy of inter-continental airliners, the males also have sex lives that would make adult film stars blush.
Pectoral sandpipers weigh in at little more than two ounces and have the distinction of being the most frequently observed North American bird to cross the Atlantic for our shores.
Since the late 1960s, more than 4,000 have arrived after becoming lost heading from Alaska and Canada for wintering grounds in Argentina. There is also evidence that some Siberian pectoral sandpipers are turning up in the UK rather than reaching Australasia.
It is back on the grassy Arctic wastes where the pectoral sandpiper’s remarkable physical prowess comes to the fore each summer.
To woo mates, males inflate air sacs in their chest, creating unworldly sounds while performing mothlike display flights.
Once a female is singled out, the male will give chase on the ground with chest plumes fluffed out like a feather duster until she succumbs to his charms.
What makes this ritual all the more incredible is the way males embark repeatedly on such peccadillos over vast areas of wilderness so they can mate with the maximum number of females.
Researchers have discovered suitors fly 110 miles on average between each mating attempt, although one particularly amorous individual in Alaska completed an 8,000mile sexual odyssey over just four weeks.
Pectoral sandpipers appear to have been incredibly active in the breeding department this year with record numbers of young birds – and exhausted adults – reported arriving around the UK.
I caught sight of an adult pectoral sandpiper, one of 80 or so birds that arrived during a single week last month, sharing the same patch of vegetation at an inland gravel pit with another Arctic shorebird, a little stint.
To woo a mate they inflate air sacs in their chest and give chase