BirdNote; Short-billed Dowitcher

BirdNote®

Short-billed Dowitcher - What’s in That Name?

Written by Rick Wright

This is BirdNote.

[Short-billed Dowitcher, ML 3157]

The chunky sandpipers known as dowitchers are familiar to bird-lovers across North America. Two species—the Short-billed and the Long-billed—feed busily on mudflats, beaches and wetlands, as they pass between their Arctic breeding grounds and wintering areas as far south as northern South America.

[Short-billed Dowitcher, ML 165596]

The Short-billed Dowitchers probing the muck of your local marsh have some secrets. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the nesting grounds of the populations that breed on the eastern coasts were finally discovered. The range limits of western populations are still largely unknown.

[Short-billed Dowitcher, ML 165596]

Equally mysterious: the name “dowitcher” itself. It has nothing to do with wealthy widows — those are dowagers.

Over the years, some have claimed that the name echoes the bird’s call:

[Short-billed Dowitcher, ML 3159, 0:14 ff.]

Others believe that it is an Iroquois word; or that it is a corruption of “deutsch”, a word used to refer to the German immigrants who liked to eat the fat fall migrants.

However they got their names, these funny shorebirds, with their trilling call, are a joy to watch.

[Short-billed Dowitcher]

For BirdNote, I’m Michael Stein.

Today’s show brought to you by the Bobolink Foundation.

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Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Short-billed Dowitcher, ML 3157 0:06, 0:50 and 1:26, recorded by Arthur A. Allen; Short-billed Dowitcher, ML 165596 0:27, and used as ambi throughout, recorded by Hope Batcheller; Short-billed Dowitcher, ML 3157, recorded by Arthur A. Allen.

Water ambient - Nature SFX 020 River

Producer: John Kessler

Production Manager: Allison Wilson

Editor: Ashley Ahearn

Producer: Mark Bramhill

Associate Producer: Ellen Blackstone

BirdNote’s theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.

© 2020 BirdNote September 2020 Narrator: Michael Stein

ID#: SBDO-01-2020-09-01 SBDO-01