semipalmated sandpiper
calidris pusilla latin

The eggs become a high-fat, high-protein feast for four species of migratory shore birds: ruddy shore birds, semipalmated sandpipers, sanderlings and red knots.

At the southern extremities of the watershed, 50 to 90 percent of the world's Semipalmated Sandpipers feed on the mud shrimp at Shepody Bay.

Semipalmated sandpipers making an August stopover at Plymouth Beach, where the shore offers abundant and nutritious clams, mussels and worms, weigh up to 40 grams before heading south.

During August, up to two million Semipalmated Sandpipers may use Mary's Point as a staging area, and as many as 200,000 may be present at any time during migration.

Sanderlings, red knots, ruddy turnstones and semipalmated sandpipers feed on rich green horseshoe-crab eggs on the Jersey and Delaware sides of the Delaware Bay, their only stopping ground on the migration.

This spring members will help count the thousands of shore birds, including red knots, ruddy turnstones, semipalmated sandpipers and sanderlings that stop on the Delaware Bay in May to feast on millions of horseshoe crab eggs laid on the beach.

Mary's Point is an important staging area for shorebirds migrating from the Canadian subarctic to South America during the fall, supporting up to two million Semipalmated Sandpipers annually, or nearly 75% of the global population of this species, as well as millions of birds of other species.

It has a historical life-size replica of a ship, the Revolving light, which had been built there in the nineteenth century, and a nature reserve at Mary's Point which is noted for its shorebirds, in particular Semipalmated Sandpipers, which feed there each summer in large migrating flocks.

The Semipalmated Sandpiper (Calidris pusilla) is a very small shorebird.

Semipalmated Sandpiper (Calidris pusilla)