Long-billed Dowitcher––another fascinating shorebird in decline

In the last half of September, the muddy shores of Safety Sound were a staging area for flocks of young long-billed dowitchers fueling up for migration. These long-legged juveniles fed voraciously, probing their long bills into the mud with the intensity, speed and motion of sewing machines.
By then, most shorebirds were long gone from the region. Juvenile long-billed dowitchers are typically among the last shorebirds to leave our shores.
Long-billed dowitchers are stocky, mid-sized sandpipers with a snipe-like appearance. Their long legs and bill enable them to wade and extract aquatic invertebrates from the depths of mud or sand.
When they arrive in the region in the last half of May, they are very handsome in their breeding plumage, which is richly speckled with bright orange, brown and white. In flight, a distinctive white stripe on the back and rump set them apart from all other shorebirds in the region.
Long-billed dowitchers breed in wetland tundra habitats from northwestern Canada through western and northern Alaska to the central Russian Arctic.
In the Bering Strait region, dowitchers are both passing migrants and breeders. They have a widely scattered breeding distribution, mainly across the coastal lowlands but also in interior wetlands. They favor wetland meadows, particularly where scattered freshwater ponds offer nearby foraging opportunities.
In May, males perform complicated, bubbly flight songs high in the air on trembling wings to claim their territories and attract a mate. Sometimes several singing males will pursue a single female in a high speed, circuitous courtship chase.
The dowitcher’s nest is usually placed on or next to a tussock or hummock in a wet meadow, near a pond. The nest cup is fairly deep, and though lined with grass, it is often quite damp at the bottom. Four eggs are usually laid during the first half of June.
Both parents defend an area around their nest, but neighboring pairs feed peacefully together at nearby ponds.
The pair shares incubation. The female spends more time on the nest early in the three-week incubation period, while the male sits more towards hatch. By mid-July most chicks have hatched.
Females depart from the breeding ground about the time of hatch. The male, alone, tends their chicks, which leave the nest as soon as all eggs are hatched. The downy young feed themselves, but the male guides them to feeding areas and protects them from danger.
On the breeding grounds dowitchers feed mainly on a variety of insects and their larvae, aquatic invertebrates and some seeds. When they move to the coast after the breeding season, marine worms and small crustaceans comprise the bulk of their diet.
Dowitchers often wade belly-deep in water when feeding and may lower their entire head under water when probing for food in submerged substrates. Their heads move rapidly up and down as they search for buried invertebrates.
The tip of the dowitcher’s long bill, like the bills of other long-billed wading birds, has many sensory receptors called “Herbst corpuscles.” These sensors enable a bird to find buried prey by touch and pressure changes.
Long-billed shorebirds such as dowitchers, godwits and snipes also have special muscles and boney linkages in the skull that enable them pull the tip of the upper mandible upwards to open just the tip of their bill. This is called “rhynchokinesis.” When they sense prey deep in the mud or sand, they are thus able to grab it without opening their entire bill.
Females have longer bills than males. This enables a pair to feed at different depths and reduces competition when foraging in the same area during the breeding season.
After the breeding season, long-billed dowitchers leave the wet meadows and freshwater ponds to flock up and feed along saltwater shorelines and mudflats before migration.
For failed breeders and females, this shift occurs around the second week of July. By the end of July, adults begin their southerly migration and most have left the region by mid-August. The peak of juvenile migration is around the second week of September and continues through the month.
Long-billed dowitchers are mid-distance migrants. Limited tracking data from northern and western Alaska suggest that at least some of our birds travel through the interior Great Plains of Canada and the United States to reach wintering areas between the Gulf coast of Texas and western Mexico.
The 2025 State of the Birds report lists long-billed dowitchers, along with at least 25 of our other once regularly occurring species, as “tipping point” species—species that have lost more than 50 percent of their population in the last 50 years.
The long-billed dowitcher is an “orange alert” tipping point species, meaning that the long-term decline has accelerated in the last decade.
Loss and degradation of critical wetland habitat along migration routes and in wintering areas is a major cause of decline for long-billed dowitchers and many other migratory bird populations.
Draining of wetlands for agriculture and commercial development, and climate change induced water shortages—from drought and reduction in snowpack—all contribute to the degradation of the habitats that are so critical to many migratory bird species.
Additionally, foraging in wetlands polluted by industry and agriculture has resulted in high contaminant levels in long-billed dowitcher specimens from Texas and California. Toxins can reduce survival and reproduction.
The rapid decline of shorebirds returning to this region in recent years is glaring. I cherish the memory of huge shimmering flocks that once flashed overhead to land on our shores. Their remnants still dazzle. If only we could protect those that are left.