Actitis macularius
Teetering, bobbing, and darting along the water’s edge or springing into shallow, stiff-winged flight with a soft weet-weet-weet call, the Spotted Sandpiper is a distinctive and delightful sight. During its breeding season this bird shows a densely-spotted throat and breast (reminiscent of a Wood Thrush’s), a black-tipped orange bill, brown back, and white eyebrow, or supercilium, that extends behind the eye. Even without its eponymous spots, which are absent during the nonbreeding season, the Spotted Sandpiper’s telltale foraging behaviors and flight style make it easy to identify.
The “Spotty” is the most widespread breeding sandpiper in North America, and is also notable for its unusual breeding behavior. Like the Red-necked Phalarope, the Spotted Sandpiper is polyandrous, meaning that females court and compete for mates, then mate and lay eggs, often with multiple males. Meanwhile, the males perform the majority of incubation and brooding duties. This unusual breeding system is found in less than one percent of the world’s birds.
Although the Spotted Sandpiper remains a regular sight across its range, its populations have declined by approximately 54 percent according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The North American Bird Conservation Initiative rates the Spotted Sandpiper as a Common Bird in Steep Decline in its 2025 State of the Birds report.
Development, agriculture, and other human activities can degrade or destroy essential Spotted Sandpiper nesting and foraging areas.
Spotted Sandpipers bioaccumulate pesticides, including artificial chemicals, mercury, and selenium, from their aquatic surroundings and prey. Compromised water quality caused by pesticide-laden runoff can also affect its breeding success.
The more extreme weather patterns associated with climate change exacerbate existing threats to the Spotted Sandpiper, such as habitat loss. Climate change also gives rise to new challenges like range shifts and altered migration patterns.
Discarded plastic fishing line and netting present potentially fatal entanglement risks to waterbirds such as the Spotted Sandpiper. These birds may also inadvertently use plastics as nesting material, posing additional threats to both adults and young.
Birds need our help to overcome the threats they face. At ABC, we’re inspired by the wonder of birds and driven by our responsibility to find solutions to meet their greatest challenges. With science as our foundation, and with inclusion and partnership at the heart of all we do, we take bold action for birds across the Americas.
Migratory birds like the Spotted Sandpiper need conservation action where they breed, where they spend the nonbreeding season, and at all of the stopover habitats they use along the way. To make these incredible journeys safer, ABC prioritizes habitat restoration and conservation and threat mitigation where birds need them most.
ABC works with partners at the state and federal levels in the U.S. to call for the regulation or cancellation of the pesticides and toxins most harmful to birds. We develop innovative programs, like working directly with farmers to use neonicotinoid coating-free seeds, advance research into pesticides’ toll on birds, and encourage millions to pass on using harmful pesticides.
In 2020, ABC and partners started SPLASh (Stopping Plastics and Litter Along Shorelines), a program to create cleaner habitats for coastal birds and other wildlife and address conservation problems along the Texas coast.
The Spotted Sandpiper is a short-legged, short-necked shorebird with a somewhat top-heavy appearance. It constantly raises and lowers its rear in a characteristic “teetering” gait while walking and feeding. The “Spotty” also has a distinctive flight style, with stiff-winged, flickering wingbeats.
Easily identified in breeding plumage by its spotted throat and undersides and bright orange, black-tipped bill, the Spotted Sandpiper becomes a trickier ID proposition during the nonbreeding season, when it loses its namesake spots and becomes a plain brown and white bird.
A key Spotted Sandpiper feature that can clinch a positive ID at all times of the year is a white streak or “hook” that curls up from the underside and around the front of the bird’s folded wing. This species also shows a white eye-stripe, a faint eyering, and a brown rump and tail in all plumages.
Both sexes of Spotted Sandpiper look alike, with females being slightly larger.
The most commonly heard vocalizations of the Spotted Sandpiper are sharp, repeated wheet or peet-weet calls. These calls vary in pitch, intensity, and rate according to context – louder and somewhat higher-pitched when dealing with aggressors, but quieter and calmer between parents and young.
Credit: Ron Overholtz, XC559004. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/559004.
Credit: Mauricio Cuéllar-Ramírez, XC694087. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/694087.
Credit: Peter Ward and Ken Hall, XC606783. Accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/606783.
The Spotted Sandpiper nests in a wide variety of habitats near water, at altitudes from sea level up to 15,000 feet. During migration and the nonbreeding season, it also occurs near water in the interior and on the coast.
Specific Area
The Spotted Sandpiper’s breeding range extends from the northern Arctic to the southern United States. Its nonbreeding grounds range from the extreme southern United States to southern South America, including the Caribbean islands. This species is resident along the western coast of the United States and in parts of California.
Range Detail
The Spotted Sandpiper breeds in a wide variety of habitats: close to freshwater lakes, rivers, and streams, and by saline lagoons and ponds near the ocean coast. Its range even extends into arid areas and mountainous regions up to 15,000 feet above sea level, as long as water is nearby. Successful breeding territories require a shoreline, a semiopen area for the nest scrape, and patches of dense vegetation where the chicks can shelter after hatching. Throughout the nonbreeding season, the Spotted Sandpiper is found along coasts and interior waterways of North and South America in a wide variety of habitats, including beaches, mangroves, rainforest, and cloud forest up to 6,000 feet in elevation.
Did you know?
Rather than traveling in large flocks like most shorebirds, the Spotted Sandpiper migrates singly or in small groups.
In addition to being the most widespread breeding sandpiper in North America, the Spotted Sandpiper is also one of the easiest to identify. Although its eponymous spots can only be seen during the breeding season, this bird’s teetering, bobbing foraging style and white wing “hook” allow for easy identification at any time of the year. The Spotted Sandpiper’s uncommon breeding strategy is another fascinating aspect of its biology.
The Spotted Sandpiper consumes a wide variety of invertebrates, including midges, mayflies, flies and their aquatic larvae, grasshoppers, beetles, worms, snails, and small crustaceans. It also eats small fish and may scavenge dead fish as well.
This species shows a variety of foraging strategies: It may probe into sand or mud with its bill, chase prey on foot or in mid-air, and glean insects off vegetation. It keeps up its characteristic teetering behavior while foraging.
The Spotted Sandpiper is polyandrous, meaning that the roles of male and female are reversed, and females may mate with more than one male. Females establish territories, compete for males, and lay more than one clutch, while the males do the majority of the incubating and care of the young. This is a rare mating system, seen in less than one percent of the world’s birds, and is thought to be a response to this bird’s relatively long breeding season.
Pair bonds form on the breeding grounds. The female Spotted Sandpiper displays to prospective mates in an elaborate swooping flight with her wings held open, singing all the while. She also performs a strutting courtship display on the ground.
One female can mate with multiple males in a season. She is able to store sperm in her body for up to one month, so the eggs she lays for one male may have been fathered by a different male from a previous mating.
Male Spotted Sandpipers that mate with the same female set up smaller territories within her territory and defend them against each other. Males tend to have more of the pituitary hormone prolactin, which promotes parental care, than females.
Both sexes of Spotted Sandpiper may select potential nest sites to attract a mate, and a pair will build numerous “starter” scrapes (shallow depressions in the ground) while cementing their bond. Once mated, the pair builds a final nest, usually within 300 feet of a water’s edge. The female initiates this final nest scrape, which she lines with dead grasses and woody material. The male often finishes the nest building. Their nest is usually located near or within taller, thicker vegetation to provide shade and shelter for the chicks.
The female Spotted Sandpiper lays a clutch of three to five eggs, which can be white, pinkish, or pale green and speckled with brown. Both sexes develop brood patches and take turns incubating, although the male does more. The incubation period lasts for 19 to 22 days, and the chicks hatch covered in down with open eyes. They are precocial at hatching, meaning they are quickly able to walk and feed themselves, and even show the species’ characteristic teetering movements soon after hatching.
Parental care (usually by the male alone) continues for approximately four weeks, while the female pairs with a new mate and starts another brood.
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