{"id":11434,"date":"2014-08-18T14:05:18","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T21:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11434"},"modified":"2014-08-18T14:05:18","modified_gmt":"2014-08-18T21:05:18","slug":"peeps-in-transit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11434","title":{"rendered":"Peeps in transit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I spotted five little sandpipers along the muddy outwash of a creek, I knew that they were not our local staple, the Spotted Sandpiper. It was only\u00a0when I shared pictures with other\u00a0birders that I learned that\u00a0I had seen peeps.<\/p>\n<p>In North America, there are only three species of peeps:\u00a0Western Sandpiper, Semipalmated Sandpiper, Least Sandpiper. I had just seen the last two together. Seeing\u00a0these\u00a0birds was\u00a0unexpected as\u00a0they breed far to the north and winter far to the south. During their long migrations, a few may stop briefly and feed.<\/p>\n<p>The five peeps were all over the place as they foraged and it was difficult to get more than one in any picture, but here is a shot showing the two species. The Semipalmated Sandpiper is on the left and the Least Sandpiper is on the right. At first glance, I had thought they were all the same species; peeps are difficult to tell apart.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11436\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/semileastsandpiper140817fs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Least Sandpiper is more colourful, has a longer bill, yellowish-green legs, and no webbing between the toes.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11440\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/leastsandpiper140817bs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Semipalmated Sandpiper is less colourful, has a short, blunt\u00a0bill, dark legs, and partial webbing between the toes (after which it is named).<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11438\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/semipalmatedsandpiper140817es.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When a comestible was found, it was quickly eaten, so catching\u00a0a grub still in the bill of this Least was lucky.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11437\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/leastsandpiper140817fs.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>South America is a long way away and we are off again.<br \/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11439\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/leastsandpiper140817cs2.jpg\" alt=\"\" onclick=\"return false\" onmousedown=\"return false\" width=\"720\" height=\"360\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; When I spotted five little sandpipers along the muddy outwash of a creek, I knew that they were not our local staple, the Spotted Sandpiper. It was only\u00a0when I shared pictures with other\u00a0birders that I learned that\u00a0I had seen &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/?p=11434\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11434"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11446,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11434\/revisions\/11446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kootenay-lake.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}