Purple sandpiper

Voice

Usually silent; most sound comes when a party lifts off. The flight call is a short, slightly grating kwit-weet, lower and fuller than Dunlin, sometimes trailing into a soft rolling prrrt. Squabbles on the rocks produce a short nasal squeak. In the Netherlands these calls are all you are likely to get; the trilling song stays behind on the northern breeding grounds.

Identification

A squat, short-legged sandpiper that looks strikingly dark and slate-grey, with a sharply demarcated white belly and coarse dark spotting along the flanks. The bill is slightly decurved with a dull yellow to orange base, and the rather short legs are ochre-yellow to orange; those two colours together are the quickest confirmation at range. In winter the head, breast and mantle are almost plain dark grey with only fine pale fringes; in summer the scapulars gain rufous edges and the breast is more heavily streaked. Autumn juveniles look far more contrasting, with neat white and rusty fringes to all the coverts. In flight a narrow white wingbar and a dark rump with white sides, and a surprisingly fast, low, shearing flight over the water.

Confusion species

Dunlin is the mistake most often made on sea defences: it has black legs and a longer, more evenly decurved bill without a yellow base. Turnstone often shares the same stones and also has orange legs, but is far more boldly patterned and has a short, wedge-shaped, pointed bill. Knot is larger, paler grey, with greenish legs and a straight bill. Sanderling is much whiter, lacks a hind toe and keeps to sandy beaches rather than rock.

Habitat

Rocky coasts and everything that imitates them: groynes, harbour moles, piers, basalt revetments and rip-rap encrusted with mussels and barnacles. It feeds in the zone just touched by the waves, picking periwinkles, small mussels, snails and crustaceans off the weed. Sandy beaches and mudflats are avoided; where a coast has no stone, the species is absent. On the breeding grounds it switches to dry tundra, gravel flats and mountain slopes.

Range and movements

Breeds in Iceland, Norway, Svalbard, north-west Russia and arctic Canada, and winters along the rocky shores of the North Atlantic south to Iberia. The Netherlands lies at the southern edge of the regular winter range: a few hundred birds on the artificial hard coast at IJmuiden, Scheveningen, the Afsluitdijk, the Brouwersdam and the Delta works. In Spain it is a scarce winter visitor, essentially confined to the rocky coasts of Galicia, Asturias and Cantabria, and rare further south.

• Resident
• Breeding (summer)
• Winter
• Passage
• Migration direction
• dark = core range, pale = thinly spread

Where and when to look

Between November and February walk the seaward face of a pier on a rising tide and scan the wet stones just above the surf. The birds move little and are exactly the grey of the basalt; usually you notice movement first and the bird second. At high water they retreat to the top of the dam and bunch together, which makes counting and comparison with Turnstones easy. A westerly blow that pushes water up the stones lifts them higher and into better view.

Conservation status

Least Concern globally, with a wide breeding range around the Arctic. The west European wintering population is declining, however: British numbers have fallen by more than ten per cent over the last 25 years, and Dutch pier counts are lower than in the 1980s. Milder winters appear to let birds stay further north. Locally, disturbance from anglers and walkers on the dams, and the replacement of rough rip-rap by smooth concrete, also play a part.