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. Both sexes of Spotted Sandpiper look alike, with females being slightly larger.

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.

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.

Song:

Flight Call:

Alarm Call:

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 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 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.

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.

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.

Help support ABC's conservation mission!

Donate Today!

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.

Policies enacted by the U.S. Congress and federal agencies, such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have a huge impact on migratory birds. You can help shape these rules for the better by telling lawmakers to prioritize birds, bird habitat, and bird-friendly measures. To get started, visit ABC's Action Center.

Living a bird-friendly life can have an immediate impact on migratory birds in the United States. Doing so can be as easy as adding native plants to your garden, avoiding pesticides, and keeping cats indoors. To learn more, visit our Bird-Friendly Life page.

American Bird Conservancy and our Migratory Bird Joint Venture partners have improved conservation management on more than 8.5 million acres of U.S. bird habitat — an area larger than the state of Maryland — over the last ten years. That's not all: With the help of international partners, we've established a network of more than 100 areas of priority bird habitat across the Americas, helping to ensure that birds' needs are met during all stages of their lifecycles. These are monumental undertakings, requiring the support of many, and you can help by making a gift today.