Papabotte

When I was a kid, these birds were known as Upland Plovers.  Now they go by the name of Upland Sandpiper, but if you take a closer look you'll get the sense that they're really just curlews with straight bills.  The local name for them was Papabotte, an onomatopoetic attempt at their weird Wood Thrush-like call.  I'm sure the Mound Builders, the Tchefuncte, the Mandans, and the Attakapas had their own names for this beautiful little bird that either paid them a visit along their migration route, or nested among them on the endless prairies.    

Despite the sandpiper name, this is a grassland bird.  Probably wildly numerous when prairie stretched unbroken up the middle of North America, the day the plow met the Great Plains was a sad day for this species.  Unlike the Rocky Mountain Locust and the Eskimo Curlew, however, Uplands were lucky enough to survive.  In Louisiana, we find them as migrants in early spring and late summer, usually in short grass settings.  They rock their heads forward and back as they pick their way along, or hold still and hope to blend in to dirt or dry grass backgrounds.

It being April, the bird you see here is on its way north, having spent most of the year on the pampas of South America.  Let's hope it makes it where it's going, and makes it back in August with some of its brood along for the long trip south.