Figure 123. Upland Sandpipers stray to California mainly during fall migration, especially between mid August and late September and usually along the coast. The late October record is exceptional (but see also Appendix H). Spring migrants are found primarily in the state’s interior, with a peak in late May.

 

Figure 124. Distribution of 22 Upland Sandpipers accepted through 2003. Six have been found on Southeast Farallon Island and Furnace Creek Ranch in Inyo County accounts for another three.

 

Figure 125. Two-thirds of California’s Upland Sandpiper records can be characterized as “one-day wonders.” Typically fugacious was this first-fall bird, photographed on 28 August 1989 in Ventura, Ventura County (1989-111; Shawneen E. Finnegan).

 

 

 

 

 

UPLAND SANDPIPER Bartramia longicauda (Bechstein, 1812)

Accepted: 22 (81%)	Treated in Appendix H: yes
Not accepted: 5	CBRC review: all records
Not submitted/reviewed: 5	Color image: none

This grassland-dwelling shorebird breeds locally from northern Alaska south and east through central and southern Canada to the southern Great Plains, and east through the Great Lakes region to the upper Atlantic coast, as far north as New Brunswick. Isolated western populations occur in eastern Oregon and Idaho, and formerly eastern Washington (breeding not confirmed since 1993). The species is a long-distance migrant that winters primarily in the southern third of South America (White 1988). Extralimital records extend to western Alaska, Arizona, the Canadian Maritimes, Bermuda, Chile, the Falkland Islands, Greenland, Europe, Australia, and Guam (Pyle and Engbring 1985).

Vernon Bailey collected California’s first Upland Sandpiper on 8 August 1896 at Tule Lake in either Siskiyou or Modoc County (Cooke 1910:65). He mailed one of its wings to the National Museum of Natural History, but it was not preserved (see Grinnell and Miller 1944). By coincidence, another wing (this one preserved), found on 31 August 1968 on Southeast Farallon Island, provided additional physical evidence of the Upland Sandpiper’s occurrence in California. The wing was doubtless from a bird seen alive on the island 22–24 August of that year (DeSante and Ainley 1980). Another interesting, remains-based record involves the fresh feathers of an Upland Sandpiper recovered on 5 June 1992 from a Peregrine Falcon eyrie in Trinity County.

Fifteen of California’s 22 Upland Sandpipers have been fall vagrants with bracketing dates of 8 August and 23 October; the other seven have been spring birds found between 15 May and 13 June (Figure 123); see also Appendix H. Ten of the 15 fall birds were found within a few miles of the coast, whereas six of the seven spring birds were encountered farther inland (Figure 124). Southeast Farallon Island accounts for five fall records involving six birds; Furnace Creek Ranch in Inyo County has hosted three records of single birds, all in the month of May.

A first-fall Upland Sandpiper present from 19 to 23 October 1999 in the Tijuana River valley, San Diego County (see McCaskie 1999), was among the latest of this species ever found in North America, although an 11 December 2002 record from Louisiana (NAB 57:214) was much later. See also Appendix H.