Long-billed Dowitcher Identification Guide

Key Field Marks

• Size & shape: A plump, football-shaped shorebird with short legs and a very long, straight bill used to probe mud "sewing-machine" style, plunging up and down rapidly.
• Bill: Long and straight, noticeably longer in females than males; longer on average than Short-billed Dowitcher's, but bill length overlaps too much between the species to be a reliable field mark on its own.
• Breeding plumage: Rich reddish-orange underparts extending onto the belly and undertail coverts, with dense dark barring along the flanks that often continues across the belly. Back feathers are dark with rufous-buff fringes.
• Nonbreeding plumage: Plain gray overall — gray breast, white belly, and a gray-brown back with faint scaling — much less distinctive than breeding birds.
• In flight: White wedge up the back and a barred tail (dark bars wider than the white bars, giving a darker overall tail impression than Short-billed).

Separating from Short-billed Dowitcher

This is one of the classic hard shorebird ID pairs. Useful clues, in order of reliability:

• Voice is the most reliable feature: Long-billed gives a sharp, single or repeated keek note; Short-billed gives a mellow, tri-syllabic tu-tu-tu.
• Habitat/salinity: Long-billed strongly prefers freshwater and brackish wetlands (flooded fields, mudflats along rivers and ponds); Short-billed favors coastal saltwater habitats, tidal mudflats, and estuaries. This is a strong probabilistic clue, especially inland.
• Breeding-plumage barring: Long-billed shows barring extending across the belly with little or no white showing; Short-billed shows more spotting on the breast fading to a whiter belly, especially in the eastern subspecies.
• Tail pattern: Long-billed's tail bars are black and wider than the white bars (looks darker); Short-billed's are more evenly black-and-white or white-dominant.
• Structure: Long-billed tends to look slightly more attenuated with proportionately longer bill, but this is subtle and not diagnostic alone.

Where & When to See It

Breeds on wet Arctic tundra in Alaska and far northern Canada, and in eastern Siberia. During migration and winter it is found across the interior United States on freshwater impoundments, flooded agricultural fields, and pond edges, as well as on the coasts. It winters from the southern United States through Mexico and Central America, generally in more inland/freshwater sites than Short-billed Dowitcher, which winters more coastally.

Voice

The single, sharp keek or peep note, often given in flight or when flushed, is the best confirming clue and differs clearly from the mellow triple note of Short-billed Dowitcher.