Bird Sightings on Sanibel

What's in a name?

On Sanibel Island, quite a lot.

Looking at wildlife sightings in the last couple of weeks, we are amazed and amused.

Amazed because the species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians is so diversified.

And amused because many of the names are kind of funny and perhaps iconic of their location.  Certainly, many are not ones we see in regular readings about our wild life.

Take for example the Dunlin.  If you read it with a long u (dune-lin) one may get a sense it is a creature near the shore. And in that conjecture you would be right on target. The Dunlin (or dune-lin) is a medium-sized sandpiper. It has a moderately short neck, a moderately long, drooping bill. and a moderately long, blackish legs. Slightly hunched appearance, we would have to consider it a feathered friend in great moderation. In breeding, the Dunlin  has a black belly, rufous cap, and rufous back. Nonbreeding plumage is all dull brownish gray, with whitish belly. 

The Dunlin is a familiar shorebird around the world, where its bright reddish back and black belly, and long, drooping bill distinguish it from nearly all other shorebirds. It breeds across the top of both North America and Eurasia, and winters along coasts around the northern hemisphere.

And then there is the Red-eyed Vireo, leading us to believe that this may be a party bird that does not get enough sleep.  That conjecture is actually partly true.  A tireless songster, the Red-eyed Vireo is one of the most common summer residents of Eastern forests. These neat, olive-green and white songbirds have a crisp head pattern of gray, black, and white. Their brief but incessant songs—sometimes more than 20,000 per day by a single male—contribute to the characteristic sound of an Eastern forest in summer. When fall arrives, they head for the Amazon basin, fueled by a summer of plucking caterpillars from leaves in the treetops.  While the Red-eyed Vireo may not be up all night, he certainly is an omnipresent and ever heard bird by day light.  And common or not, he is special to us.

Though there are many birds that raise our eyebrows in delight with their names, perhaps none more so than the Dowitcher, which certainly reminds us of the term thingamabob and thingamajig, both terms referring to a person whose name has been forgotten.  To complicate and accentuate, the humor, Dowitchers come in two types: a short billed Dowitcher and a long billed Dowitcher.  Both birds are common and conspicuous migrants  that use a "sewing-machine" method of foraging across the mud flats.

The birds of Sanibel can be very entertaining and they do not need to do a thing to make us smile!