This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Calidris maritime
Birders in southern Utah's Washington County are enjoying a very rare purple sandpiper at Sand Hollow State Park. This is the first state record for a purple sandpiper, extremely rare, since its normal range is the East Coast.
The credit for finding this rare bird goes to Rick Fridell, a wildlife biologist for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. The story of Fridell finding this bird offers a brief insight into the driven nature of birders.
Fridell told me that he had stopped by Sand Hollow State Park early Nov. 28 with his family to see the contrast of the newly falling snow on the redrock landscape. True to the nature of a birder, Rick surveyed birds that were present, even though the wind was howling and it was snowing.
He noticed two shorebirds several hundred meters away on a sandbar island. His scope was shaky and blurry in the wind and snow. One of the birds was a dunlin (itself a rare bird for Washington County), and the other shorebird was darker, although acting and feeding like a dunlin. Fridell dismissed it as a second dunlin and went home.
The "dark" on the one shorebird was nagging Fridell. He decided to go back and check it out, just in case. Both birds were still present with better and closer viewing conditions. Fridell was able to see that this shorebird was a very significant record, the first purple sandpiper recorded west of the Great Plains.
He needed to document the sighting and record the subtle differences between these two species. There was only one thing that he could do to get closer to the birds, so he returned home and loaded up his inflatable kayak (and called a few other birders on the way). Returning with just a half-hour of daylight, he paddled closer and captured this definitive photo of the purple sandpiper.
The purple sandpiper gets its name from the purple gloss on the feathers of its back. It is 9 inches in length with a wing span of 17 inches. This small shorebird weighs a mere 2.5 ounces. It is a hatch-year bird due to the extensive pale edging on the coverts and tertials. Its mantle and scapulars are narrowly edged a buffy white. There is sharply defined spotting on lower breast and flanks. The legs and base of the bill are a tinged orange.
Bill Fenimore is author of The Backyard Birds of Utah, owner of the Layton Wild Bird Center, http://www.wildbird.com/layton, and a member of the Utah Wildlife Board.