Short-billed Dowitcher

Dowitchers are chunky shorebirds with long bills, characteristics they share with their close relatives the woodcock and snipe. They can usually be picked out of a mixed flock based on their foraging behavior, which involves moving their bills up and down like a sewing machine. Although the Short-billed Dowitcher is the expected species in New Hampshire, the almost identical Long-billed shows up in most years, primarily in the fall. The bill lengths of the two species overlap, so identification typically involves more subtle plumage patterns or vocalizations.

Short-billed Dowitchers nest in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska, usually in bogs or wet meadows. In addition to being remote and often inaccessible, such habitats are typically filled with biting insects during the breeding season, and for these reasons the nest of the species was not discovered until the early 20th century. The nest and eggs of the eastern subspecies that we typically see in New Hampshire eluded ornithologists until the 1970s. Although studies of breeding biology are rare, the limited data available indicate that the females abandon their brood to the male shortly after the chicks hatch.

Females thus start southward migration earlier than males, which depart two weeks later once the young can fly. As a result, the first dowitchers to grace the New Hampshire coast in early July are mostly females, with the proportion of males increasing through August. By that time the juveniles have also left the breeding grounds and started south, and these young birds predominate along the coast from late August into the very beginning of October.