#whimbrels

[spinus-pinus]

Hudsonian Whimbrel Numenius hudsonicus

12/13/2025 Ensenada, Mexico

[frametoframenature]

Last week, we learned that a group of whimbrels had landed at a pond just up the road from our place. This was the first time this species had landed in our area & we were happy to witness their passing through southern Ontario on their way to the far north.

[boy-warbler]

Some better whimbrel views today!

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The Cornell Lab:

I am waiting on a sandy island along the South Carolina coast, on a late evening in May when the low light has gilded everything around me—the waving cordgrass where Marsh Wrens sing, the beach where plovers and sandpipers scurry, the flocks of Black Skimmers that row by with mothlike wingbeats and peevish calls. I have been told that if I wait here for dark, I will see a miracle…a word I use with careful deliberation.

With dusk, the miracle arrives.

Flocks of Whimbrels appear, a few dozen at first, then by low hundreds, then in such numbers that I have a hard time keeping any sort of count. Drawn shoreward from the distant, marshy horizons, they fly in ragged lines and loose clusters, untidy chevrons of big, strong shorebirds, nut-brown bodies and long, flashing wings, beaks curved like the crescent moon that will appear in the black sky a few hours later. A few circle, calling, but most land without preamble on a wide, flat expanse of over­wash beach on the edge of the island, facing into the wind in dense-packed ranks. More, and more, and still more.

A little before eight o’clock, a huge flock sweeps toward me out of an orange sunset. They move in a wide sheet, high at first and then spilling toward the ground like water flowing down a low hill, bunching and veering en masse to their left, following the beach on which I stand. There are perhaps a thousand of them. Seven-whistle calls ring like old brass sleigh bells. They surge around me like river water parted by a rock; there is a moment of wild mayhem, the air churned by motion and wings, and they are gone.

The Whimbrel spectacle I was expe­riencing on the coast of South Carolina in May 2021, on an ephemeral barrier island known as Deveaux Bank near Charleston, was something few people alive today have ever seen. Whimbrels congregate here for a month or more in spring, pausing in their migration between the coast of South America and the Canadian Arctic, to feed on fiddler crabs in the rich tidal marshes. Some 20,000 Whimbrels gather each night on Deveaux Bank during this migratory stopover, the largest such congregation known anywhere on the planet.

[boy-warbler]

It's that time of year again! Off to the Whimbrel watch at Colonel Samuel Smith Park

[boy-warbler]

It's that time of year again. The whimbrel watch is ON!

[boy-warbler]

Whimbrels are always the stars but just like last year, a least bittern stole the show at today's Colonel Samuel Smith bird festival. I wonder if it was the same bird?

[boy-warbler]

It's that time of year again! The Whimbrel Watch starts this Saturday at Colonel Samuel Smith Park.