Surfing Spotted Sandpipers On The Arkansas River

I saw something I’d never seen before, Spotted Sandpipers riding fast-moving logs down the Arkansas River while foraging! Wild and totally unexpected!

Not once, but three separate times. The first time I didn’t have a camera in my hand, but I had it ready for the second and third.

Spotted Sandpiper floating down the Arkansas River on a log

Spotted Sandpipers. On logs. Floating down the Arkansas River at Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge. And I don’t mean logs bumping gently along a quiet bend.

The river is high and moving fast, and these birds were cruising right along with it.

They were walking on the logs as they floated, picking off food from the wet surfaces and from bits of detritus moving alongside.

I watched them stay balanced as the current pushed everything downstream, calmly foraging like it was something they did every day.

Spotted Sandpiper on a log floating down the Arkansas River

I’ve seen Spotted Sandpipers forage on shorelines and riverbanks, and the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, weaving through rocks and along the edges, but never like this.

Never floating, never catching food from the river while riding fast-moving logs. I didn’t even know they did that.

I can’t say if this is something they only do when the water’s up or if they’ve been doing it all along and I’ve just never caught it. Either way, it felt rare and a little bit unreal. I kept thinking, did that just happen?

Nature always seems to have a few surprises left, and this was definitely one of them. Brief unexpected behaviors from the Spotted Sandpipers, something that I won’t forget anytime soon.

Side note: My site is finally up and running on the new server. That took longer than expected, but my site? It’s huge. There may be a few hiccups today as it populates across the net on the new server. Thanks for bearing with me.

Life is good.

Mia

Click here to see more of my Spotted Sandpiper photos plus facts and information about this species.