Pectorals and Pipits

     On April 2, 2018, I saw on the internet that someone spotted pectoral sandpipers, and a few other species of shorebirds, in a soggy meadow in southeastern Pennsylvania.  I thought, "yes, pectorals should be in local pastures by now and through April.  For a few hours that same morning, I drove through Lancaster County, Pennsylvania farmland to look for pectoral sandpipers and other critters in meadows, especially pastures with puddles of standing water from snow melt and recent rain.
     I stopped at a pond about as big as a small barn, but only inches deep, that was used for ice skating.  I looked for pectorals along its grassy shores, but found two Wilson's snipe and two killdeer plover, both well camouflaged, and still here from winter.  And I saw several each of recently arrived American robins and purple grackles on the short grass around that open-water pond.  Those four species of birds were looking for earthworms and other kinds of invertebrates in the grassy niches they were occupying.
     I also saw a few each of robins, grackles and starlings, and a killdeer and a snipe in a puddle in a field across the country road from that skating pond.  They, too, were looking for invertebrates emerging from the ground to avoid drowning.  I could plainly see the snipe rapidly pushing its beak up and down in mud under inch-deep water to get food.
     Moving on, I saw other partly-flooded meadows, each with a few robins, starlings, grackles and red-winged blackbirds wading in inch-deep water to ingest invertebrates.  A killdeer or two were also in some of them, picking invertebrates from the surfaces of mud and water.  A half-dozen tree swallows with iridescent-blue tops and white bellies, fluttered and careened over one flooded field as they caught and consumed flying insects on the wing. 
     At another wet meadow by a lonely rural road, I saw several striking male red-wings, some of them perched on scattered sapling trees where they repeatedly flashed the red feathers on each wing and sang their "konk-ga-ree" songs to establish nesting territories.  And I noticed a couple of beautifully-furred muskrats swimming in the pasture brook on errands unknown to me.
     I stopped at another partially-flooded meadow by a country road.  There I saw about 80 attractive ducks of four species and both genders, including mallards, black ducks and American wigeons left-over from winter and recently-arrived green-winged teal in a farmer's meadow.  I don't think I ever saw such a variety of ducks in an unprotected, short-grass pasture as I did that day.  The ducks of those four kinds were intermingled among each other as they walked about and shoveled up aquatic vegetation and invertebrates from the pools, and mud and short grass among those puddles.
     There also were several handsome robins, and a few each of grackles, starlings and red-wings feeding on invertebrates in the same puddles.  And there was a killdeer, two pectoral sandpipers and a few sparrow-sized American pipits among those pools in that same meadow!  They, too, were looking for invertebrates to eat.  The pectorals were recent arrivals here, but the pipits were in local fields and pastures all winter, especially around little trickles and rivulets of clear, running water.
     Both Arctic tundra nesters, migrant pectorals and wintering pipits overlap each other here in April, as well as on open ground across the United States.  Both are brown with darker markings, which camouflages them on bare ground and soil with sparse vegetation.
     Interestingly, pectorals have habits similar to those of snipe, including settling among puddles and rivulets in short-grass meadows and harvested fields that are mostly bare in April when pectorals pass through here between wintering grounds in South America and breeding territories on the tundra.  I was happy to see all the creatures I did that day, but especially to spot pectoral sandpipers and pipits in the same pasture.