Date: 8/6/25 9:48 am From: Dennis Paulson via Tweeters <tweeters...> Subject: Re: [Tweeters] Fwd: arctic nesters and climate change
Steve, that’s a wonderful Substack essay. I’ll add one thing to it. It’s not just males that leave their mates behind to finish up parental care in the Arctic.* In a few species, for example Ruffs and Pectoral and Buff-breasted Sandpipers, that is the case. In fact, in those species the male doesn’t even help in incubating the eggs.
But in numerous, perhaps most, species, including Semipalmated and Western Sandpipers and dowitchers and Whimbrels as examples, it is MALES that are more likely to remain to furnish parental care after the eggs hatch. It varies greatly, but among high-latitude breeding shorebirds, females depart the breeding grounds before males on average. This isn’t surprising, as it would benefit them to head south to better feeding grounds to replenish their energy after laying those four big eggs and sharing incubation duties with the males.
And of course everyone knows about phalaropes, in which males furnish all parental care, totally opposite those species in which females do it all. Shorebirds have an amazing variety of mating systems. In our familiar Spotted Sandpiper, for example, many females court multiple males and leave all the parental duties to them. But others are monogamous, sharing parental duties with a single mate. Wow.
Dennis Paulson
Seattle
* We often view birds in a sexist mode. Think of how many people would see a bird on a nest and say “isn’t she sweet?” Yet males of so many bird species also incubate the eggs.
