The Story
I photographed this Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularius) at Playa El Diablo on the Guayabero River, near La Macarena, Meta, Colombia, in February 2021. It is 18 to 20 centimeters long and weighs 34 to 50 grams. Its spots change over its life and become heaviest around the breeding season. Like the other Actitis sandpiper, it has a distinctive stiff-winged flight low over the water. It is philopatric, which means birds tend to come back to the same area to breed. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I used a Canon R5 with the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender for this one, at 1/500 sec, f/16, ISO 12800. Birds recorded in the La Macarena reserve up to 1978 already numbered 456 species, about 27 percent of all the birds of Colombia.
©2021 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Spotted Sandpiper (Actitis macularius) belongs to the family Scolopacidae (Sandpipers and Allies) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2024), with the population trend listed as stable. Source: IUCN Red List