Welcome to the Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos) stopover ecology study Web resource! This is a collaborative effort between Iowa State University, The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (under authority of the Sustainable Rivers Program [SRP]), and the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to track migrating Pectoral Sandpipers at Iowa stopover sites (Red Rock and Coralville lakes) during fall migration.
The Pectoral Sandpiper breeds across the Arctic in western North America and eastern Siberia and winters primarily in central and southern South America (Farmer et al. 2020). It is a common spring (late March through late May) and fall (early July through late October) migrant in Iowa. Fall concentrations can number in the thousands in late July and August. Consistent fall stopover locations in Iowa include Red Rock and Saylorville reservoirs in central Iowa, Union Slough National Wildlife Refuge in north-central Iowa, and Hawkeye Wildlife Area in eastern Iowa, as long as habitat conditions are ideal. Little is known about their stopover dynamics in Iowa or the Midwest (Murphy and Dinsmore 2014).
The Sustainable Rivers Program is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and The Nature Conservancy that aims to learn how environmental flows can be incorporated into reservoir pool management strategies. Environmental flows are scientific prescriptions for the timing, quality, and quantity of water flows needed to sustain environmental function and species' habitat (The Nature Conservancy 2020). Environmental pool management began at Red Rock in fall 2021 with the goal of dropping the pool beginning in late July to benefit migratory shorebirds (Calomeni et al. 2022). The plan calls for a 1.5 foot drop ending in late August, followed by a pool raise in early September when most shorebirds have departed. The exposed mudflats are rapidly colonized by vegetation, which when reflooded in fall provide food and cover for waterfowl and other wildlife.
Our research group at Iowa State University studies the population ecology of birds and other taxa. This particular project is led by Victoria Fasbender (M.S. student in my lab) with support from Iowa Department of Natural Resources and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff. For this study we use the Pectoral Sandpiper to investigate how long they stop over at Red Rock and Coralville, how they make use of the varied habitat that is available because of the SRP environmental flows, and where they go once they depart our area.
Project objectives:
- Estimate residency time for the Pectoral Sandpiper during fall migration.
- Characterize local movements of the Pectoral Sandpiper at Lake Red Rock in response to SRP environmental flows.
- Share bird tracking data with the public (this Web page).
Field methods
Pectoral Sandpipers (Calidris melanotos) are captured with the use of mist nets, which is a standard shorebird capture technique. We use 60 mm mesh mist nets that are 12 m long and 3 m tall and deploy them in areas frequented by foraging shorebirds. Our research group has successfully used this approach with this species at a site in northwestern Iowa in 2012, and also with other migratory shorebirds at Saylorville Lake (2016-2020) and Lake Red Rock (2021-2022). We collect basic morphometric data for all captured birds, including flattened wing chord, tarsus length, and body mass and use established formulae to assign sex to each individual (wing chord >133 mm is a male and <133 mm is a female).
Each Pectoral Sandpiper that meets minimum weight requirements (~80 g) is fitted with a Lotek PinPoint ARGOS satellite tag weighing 4 g. Each tag is affixed to the bird using using glue to adhere to the back feathers; the tag drops off when the bird molts these feathers in fall. These tags have a dedicated battery that provides ~75 location fixes that are programmed to a specific schedule that is intended to focus on local movements at Lake Red Rock. We anticipate that residency time is approximately one week based on other studies, so the tags will be programmed to record ~15 locations per day for 5 days.
The tracking devices
We are using two tag types to track Pectoral Sandpipers, each with different capabilities that are geared to answer specific questions. The first tag, which is used on most of our birds, is the Lotek PinPoint GPS ARGOS tag weighing 4 grams. We're using this tag to collect frequent (~hourly) locations of sandpipers at Red Rock to better understand how they use this site during migration. It has a dedicated battery and no solar panel meaning we'll get a maximum of ~75 locations before the tag bettery dies. The second tag is the LOTEK Sunbird Solar ARGOS tag weighing ~2 grams. This tag does not collect GPS locations, meaning the fix accuracy is lower than with the PinPoint tags. However, this tag is rechargeable and lasts much longer, allowing us to track movements at and away from tagging locations. We're hoping that by using both tags we can better understand Pectoral Sandpiper movements and local and hemisphere scales. All work is approved by the ISU Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC protocol #22-150) and federal and state banding permits held by SJD.
Here are the latest tracks for the birds we've tagged so far. Please recall that these locations are unfiltered and some points are clearly incorrect and will be edited out at a later time. This is a cost of providing the data in real time. Enjoy!
2024 Iowa Pectoral Sandpipers (tags still active)
2024 Iowa Pectoral Sandpipers
**Note that none of these 2024 birds is still transmitting tracking data
Red Rock Lake
Bird 267278 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267279 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267280 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267281 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267282 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267283 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267284 Tracked to Mississippi River in Mercer Co., IL
Bird 267285 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267287 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267288 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267290 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267294 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267295 Tracked to near Pulaski, TN
Bird 267296 Tracked to Gulf of Mexico south of Tallahassee, FL
Bird 267298 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267299 Tracked to Atlantic Ocean east of Florida
Bird 267300 Tracked to near Great Guana Cay, Bahamas
Bird 267301 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267302 Tracked to Caribbean Sea off Colombia
Bird 267304 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267305 Tracked to near Rosedale, MS
Bird 267306 Tracked to the Gulf of Mexico north of the west end of Cuba
Bird 267307 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267308 Never left Red Rock Lake (bird appeared to be depredated)
Bird 267310 Tracked to Haiti
Bird 267311 Tracked to south of Tampico, Mexico
Bird 267312 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267313 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267314 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267315 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267316 Tracked to east of Lake Okeechobee, Florida
Bird 267317 Tracked to south of Lake Okeechobee, Florida
Bird 267318 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267319 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267320 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267321 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267322 Tracked to Gulf of Mexico west of Florida
Bird 267323 Tracked to the Caribbean Sea south of Jamaica
Bird 267324 Tracked to eastern Panama
Bird 267339 Tracked to between Cuba and Jamaica
Bird 267340 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 267354 Tracked to south of New Orleans, Louisiana
Bird 267356 Tracked to near Albany, Kentucky
Coralville Lake
Bird 267289 Never left Coralville Lake
Bird 267291 Tracked to Colombia
Bird 267292 Tracked to Brazil
Bird 267293 Never left Coralville Lake
Bird 267297 Never left Coralville Lake
Saylorville Lake
Bird 267337 Tracked to the Caribbean Sea south of Jamaica
Bird 267338 Tracked to near Whitehall, IL
Bird 267342 Tracked to southwest of Lake Okeechobee, Florida
Bird 267360 Tracked to the Straits of Florida
2023 Iowa Pectoral Sandpipers
**Note that none of the 2023 birds is still transmitting tracking data
Bird 252421 Tracked to Lake Rathbun, Iowa
Bird 252422 Tracked to the Dominican Republic
Bird 252423 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252424 Tracked to Colombia
Bird 252425 Tag was a partial failure
Bird 252426 Tracked to Colombia
Bird 252427 Tracked to Venezuela
Bird 252428 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252429 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252430 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252431 Tracked to Colombia
Bird 252432 Tracked to near Goldston, NC
Bird 252433 Tracked to near Hopeulikit, GA
Bird 252434 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252435 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252436 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252437 Tracked to Colombia
Bird 252438 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252439 Tracked to Venezuela
Bird 252440 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252441 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252442 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252443 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252444 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 252446 Never left Red Rock Lake
Bird 253348 Tracked to near Grimes, IA
Bird 253349 Tracked to Puerto Rico
Bird 253350 Tracked to Venezuela
Bird 253351 Tracked to Venezuela
Acknowledgments
We thank the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Sustainable Rivers Program for funding this work. Thanks are due to the many individuals who have helped with this work, especially Todd Gosselink, Kevin Murphy, Rachel Ruden, and Perry Thostenson.
Literature Cited
Calomeni, A. J., C. Theiling, and B. C. Suedel. 2022. Planning and Implementation of Environmental Pool Management at Lake Red Rock, Des Moines River, Iowa. EWN Technical Notes Collection. ERDC/TN EWN-22-6. Vicksburg, MS. US Army Engineer Research and Development Table.
Farmer, A., R. T. Holmes, and F. A. Pitelka. 2020. Pectoral Sandpiper (Calidris melanotos), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.pecsan.01
Murphy, K. T., and S. J. Dinsmore. 2014. Stopover dynamics of fall migrant Pectoral Sandpipers in Iowa. Wader Study Group Bulletin 121:186-192.
TNC (The Nature Conservancy). 2020. Sustainable Rivers Program: Modernizing Water Infrastructure to Maximize Benefits. Land and Water Stories. https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/protect-water-and-land/land-and-water-stories/sustainable-rivers-project/.
For more information or comments please email Dr. Stephen J. Dinsmore, Iowa State University ( cootjr@iastate.edu ).
Preferred citation for this page:
Dinsmore, S. J. 2024. Iowa Pectoral Sandpiper Stopover Study. https://faculty.sites.iastate.edu/cootjr/iowa-pectoral-sandpiper-stopov…