Repeating Historical Purple Sandpiper Surveys to Update Status of Overwintering Population
In the early 2000s, Glen Mittelhauser and collaborators at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife conducted the first systematic survey of coastal Maine to document the distribution and study the winter ecology of Purple Sandpipers. Repeated surveys in the 2010s estimated that overwintering counts of this species in Maine declined by 49% since the initial surveys.
Beginning in 2023, MNHO ecologist Elliot Johnston is leading a renewal of that survey effort to see what has changed with Maine’s wintering Purple Sandpiper population. As part of this effort, MNHO helped form a Purple Sandpiper Working Group that is coordinating winter surveys between Newfoundland and Virgina.
Glen Mittelhauser and Lindsay Tudor tracking nano-tagged Purple Sandpipers circa 2002
Glen Mittelhauser and Kelsey Sullivan discuss the survey route near Swan’s Island, January 2024. (Photo by Elliot Johnston)
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