Figure 135. The southbound migration of adult shorebirds normally precedes that of juveniles. This one-year-old Curlew Sandpiper, photographed on 4 July 1981 at San Elijo Lagoon in San Diego County, furnished the state’s earliest fall record (1981-040; Herbert Clarke).

 

Figure 136. The Curlew Sandpiper reaches California mainly as a fall vagrant between July and November. Most adults pass through by mid August, and a second peak corresponds to the main passage of first-fall birds in September. Spring vagrants pass through between mid April and the end of May (see also Appendix H).

 

Figure 137. Distribution of 33 Curlew Sandpipers accepted through 2003. Twenty-two of the 26 fall records, but only two of the seven spring records, are from the coast.

 

Figure 224. California averages one Curlew Sandpiper record per year, most of them along the coast from Marin County southward. This first-fall bird was photographed on 29 August 1981 along the northern coast at the Smith River bottoms of Del Norte County (1981-052; Ron LeValley).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CURLEW SANDPIPER Calidris ferruginea (Pontoppidan, 1763)

Accepted: 33 (50%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 33	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 2	Large color image: see Figures, H-19

This sandpiper breeds across arctic Siberia, casually in northern Alaska. The species winters widely in the Old World, as far north as the British Isles but mostly along tropical and subtropical coasts from sub-Saharan Africa through southern Asia to Australia (Cramp 1983). Migrants are found rarely, but regularly, in the Northeast and mid Atlantic regions, and casually across the rest of North America. A very late individual was recorded from 18 to 22 December 2005 on the southern coast of Oregon (NAB 60:277). Extralimital records extend south through Middle America to Peru and Argentina. Neville (1998) summarized vagrant records from the interior Southwest.

California’s first Curlew Sandpiper was a bird in its first fall photographed on 7 September 1966 at Rodeo Lagoon in Marin County. Since 1971, records have averaged nearly one per year, with the autumns of 1981 and 2001 each producing four occurrences. More than three-quarters of the state’s records (26 of 33) are autumnal (see Figure 136). Eleven out of 14 records of southbound adults have occurred between 4 July and 18 August, whereas 11 out of 12 records of first-fall birds fall within the later period of 28 August–16 October. A very late adult was present 31 October–1 November 1981 at Ferndale bottoms in Humboldt County, and an even tardier first-year individual was present 21–24 November 2000 along the lower Santa Ana River in Costa Mesa, Orange County. Although most fall records are coastal, five of the seven spring records (16 April–26 May) come from the interior (Figure 137). See also Appendix H.