Date: 9/12/26 8:02 am From: Joseph Neal <0000078cbd583d7c-dmarc-request...> Subject: BOOT-SUCKING MUD BENEFITS BIRD MIGRATION THROUGH Northwest Arkansas City
SHOREBIRDS (AKA, sandpipers) are leaving their rocky, snowy, tundra nesting country way north of us. They are on the wing from nesting in Alaska and northern Canada. On the wing and migrating over and sometimes stopping down in Northwest Arkansas City.
We don’t have any tundra, but the long drought and hot weather sounds an alert for birders in Northwest Arkansas City. Mudflats are exposed as our springs, streams, and ponds begin go down. Freshly exposed mud is full of numerous maggot-like or mealworm-like insect larvae.
Even a tiny bird migrating through – say Semipalmated Sandpiper – knows a fresh mudflat with boot-sucking mud will help them energize for the rest of their migration, say down into Mexico and South America. As migration proceeds, muddy flats around our springs, streams, and lakes are at times fill with avian visitors.
I’ve been out on some of our 100 degree days in order to visit mudflats and identify birds. A partial list would include Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs, Solitary Sandpiper, Willet, Spotted Sandpiper, Upland Sandpiper … well, I could go on with at least 13 more.
All the way back to mid-July, migrating shorebirds have found these flats. On September 11, several of us loaded into a canoe and kayaks and paddled through Blue Springs in the upper Beaver Lake area. Mudflats have appeared along feeder streams. They all hosted shorebirds probing soft mud for yummy larvae of Shore Flies (family Eghydridae), various worms, and others.
The mudflats and the new short green grass that soon develops also provides habitat for the early migrating ducks like Blue-winged Teal and Green-winged Teal. In the same areas we see flocks of migrating egrets like stunning, tall, white American Egret and sometimes including Cattle Egret and Snowy Egret.
The southward migration so obvious at these mudflats also includes other migratory birds like terns. On our Blue Springs paddling expedition we had great views of Forester’s Terns diving for small fish. We also saw first Pied-billed Grebe migrants.
On a weekday, you have this habitat more or less to yourself. Alan Bland, paddling a kayak, pointed out a Beaver lodge. We could hear the White-eyed Vireos, also migrating, up in the adjoining woodlands.
A snag tree up on the ridge hosted another interesting migrant, an Olive-sided Flycatcher. It was spotted from his kayak by local bird expert, Kenny Younger.
How long will this mudflat habitat last? Old Man and Old Woman Weather will have the last word on this. Big rains refills springs, rivers, and lakes. Mudflats with their generous supplies of boot-sucking and larvae-rich mud disappear under the lake.
Those Solitary Sandpipers of August and September will be long gone. But with climate change, there is a guarantee that in coming years we face more intense heat and more drought. So there will be mudflats.
There will be boot-sucking mud. There will be fly larvae in the mud. There will be some birders out there, too, trying to figure out what it’s all about.
