The Pectoral Sandpiper is a medium-small shorebird best known for the crisp, clean line where its densely streaked brown breast ends abruptly against a white belly — as if the bird were wearing a streaked bib or vest, the "pectoral" band that gives it its name. Brown and scaly above with yellowish legs and a slightly drooped bill, it favors grassy, vegetated wet ground rather than open mudflats, often crouching low and threading through wet meadows and flooded fields where it can be surprisingly hard to spot until it flushes.
Pectoral Sandpipers breed on the Arctic tundra and are long-distance migrants, many wintering in southern South America, and they pass through Michigan in spring and, more numerously, over a long fall window. On the breeding grounds the male performs an extraordinary display, inflating a fat air sac in his breast and giving deep hooting notes as he flies over the tundra. In the state, look for the sharply demarcated breast band and grassy-field habitat to pick this "grasspiper" out from the flats-loving sandpipers.
Feeds on insects and their larvae, small invertebrates, and some seeds, gleaned from wet grassy ground, marsh edges, and flooded fields. It forages by picking and probing in vegetated wet areas rather than on open mud, taking prey from the surface and shallow cover.
Look for the sharp, clean line where the heavily streaked brown breast meets the white belly, like a streaked bib. Combined with yellowish legs, a slightly drooped bill, and a preference for grassy wet fields, this breast band is distinctive.
Because it favors wet grassy fields, marsh edges, and flooded fields over open mudflats, often hiding low in the vegetation. Several field-loving sandpipers earn this informal nickname.
As a migrant in spring and, in larger numbers, over a long fall window. It nests on the Arctic tundra and winters as far south as southern South America, passing through the state on the way.
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