For me, fall got underway at about 7:00am this morning. In know we’re only a few days into summer (according to the calendar anyway), but it’s “fall” for some shorebirds already!

This morning, I watched a Lesser Yellowlegs flying high, heading due south, over Capisic Pond Park in Portland, calling a couple of times to reveal its identity. While it is possible that the Short-billed Dowitcher that Mike and I spotted at Wells Harbor yesterday, or the 4 Greater Yellowlegs reported from Scarborough Marsh earlier this week could have been the first southbound migrants of the season, this high-flying, inland, “LessLegs” left no doubt to its direction and intentions.

While most birders think of migration as being May and September, there is really no month out of the year that there isn’t some species, or group of species, that is one the move in Maine – or almost anywhere else. Shorebirds are a perfect example. While the very last of the spring migrants are moseying north in late June, the first southbound migrants of fall are wandering south.

Most of these extremely late and early individuals are either non-breeders, or immature birds. Most shorebirds do not breed in their first summer, so they are in less of a hurry to head north. Other individuals may have been delayed – perhaps by a lack of food, an injury, etc., and may have not made it to the breeding grounds at all. Some of these non-breeding birds linger for the summer in our area.

“Failed breeders,” are individuals that made it to the breeding ground, but were not successful for one reason or another. Perhaps they were unable to attract a mate. Perhaps they lost their eggs to a predator or the chicks to a late storm. With so little time to renest following a failure (due to the short “summer” in the high latitudes), some of these birds begin to head south – no point in hanging around up there!

Whatever the causes are, it means we never go to long without seeing new shorebirds in our area. In fact, the “Fall” International Shorebird Survey (which, by the way, volunteers are still needed for) gets underway in a mere 2 weeks!