Air Date: Week of May 16, 2025

Dunlin asleep in the saltpans. (Photo: © Mark Seth Lender)

On the placid saltpans of Parker River National Wildlife Refuge in coastal Massachusetts, the shorebirds known as dunlin are feeding. Then, just like that, they rise and fly in almost perfect unison to evade an intruder, Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence Mark Seth Lender reports.

Transcript

CURWOOD: After the break, we’ll hear about a shorebird success story. But first, here’s a moment Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence Mark Seth Lender observed among different shorebirds last fall.

Countermeasures
Dunlin
Parker River National Wildlife Refuge
Newburyport, Massachusetts
© 2024 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

LENDER: Dunlin have gathered for sleep. Out on the saltpans. More than a hundred. The crest of a great wave, South. They stand stilted on one foot, faces turned all the way round and tucked between shoulders, breathing in their own feathered warmth. The saltpans are shallow, the bottom muddy; one pops up with the effort of pulling free and pogo sticks to a different spot. Indicative of an edginess that ultimately makes them leave; a short flurry of takeoff and land, same thing.

At sunrise, beneath the long shadow of the sand dune they are already feeding. Like Singer sowing machines, the foot-peddle kind my grandmother owned. Industrious little grandmothers, that's what they look like, their stubby little beaks with that downdip at the end going, chakka-chakka, chakka-chakka, chakka-chakka chukka. Stitching for pennies, no time for rest.

And –

Whoofff!

The entire flock is airborne.

Turn Left! Turn right! Towards me now, the knife edge of their wings all in the vertical and all in line.

And TURN!

Wings blue-white in the dune’s blue-grey shadow.

TURN!

Wings red-gold as they rise into sunlight.

TURN!

Drop low wings kissing water.

TURN! TURN! And TURN…

Falcon.

That’s what put the dunlin up.

One of the regulars thinks, merlin. Kestrel, merlin, peregrine even, the same for all of them, the half-illumination of early morning works to their advantage. Reduced, so the dunlin hope, by the paradox of confusion in synchronous flight.

As the sun clears the dune the flock breaks into clans and families, to settle in the tall marsh grasses where they continue to feed, hiding as much as they can from the all too revealing day. Until dusk. When they return to the saltpans, out in the open, waiting on the dark.

While across the marsh now a northern harrier glides, her eye catching the last radical of light, an ancient and indifferent star.

CURWOOD: That’s Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence, Mark Seth Lender.

 

Links

Read Mark’s field note here

Much of the wildlife of the National Wildlife Refuges along the Eastern seaboard can be found at Smeagull’s Guide to Wildlife

About Parker River NWR

More of Mark Seth Lender’s photography can be seen at