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These small, active sandpipers breed in wet meadows and marshes, generally moving southwards and coastwards in winter. They lose most of the characteristic breast spots when not in breeding plumage, but retain the tail-bobbing that lets an experienced birder identify them easily at long distances. The sandpipers above show most of the spotting characteristic of summer plumage; they were photographed on a rocky shoreline at La Jolla, California. The bird on the mudflat was at the San Jacinto Wildlife Area in Riverside County, California. The heavily spotted birds below (one in a tree) were breeding at a pond near Fairbanks, Alaska. The faintly-spotted individual at the bottom of the page was feeding in a small drainage channel at Newport Back Bay, in coastal Orange County, California, and the intermediate bird was migrating through Desert Center, California. |
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