This week for Flora and Fauna Friday it’s our pale-plumaged beach-combing shorebird, the Willet (Tringa semipalmata).
The Willet is a large shorebird found on beaches and mudflats across the coastal United States and a common shorebird here on Edisto Island. Willets stand about a foot tall on long pale-gray legs. In winter their plumage is a solid pattern of blended muted-brown, gray, and white and, in summer, the same but with black speckling. Their bill is rather long, arrow-straight, and two-tone gray at the base and black near the tip. Willets are most often spotted walking the shoreline on beaches, like a beachcomber searching for shells, or trapesing across the mudlfats at low tide. Willets, like other long-billed shorebirds, feed on invertebrates that live in the sand and mud along our saline waterbodies. Willets are quite the dull looking bird but one that’s nonetheless easy to identify. Their lackluster coloration is actually quite distinctive as no other shorebird their size is anywhere near as drab nor do they have gray legs or a gray bill. That coloration is also quite good camouflage on the beach, blending in nicely with our pale, gray-brown beach sands. On the wing, Willets are even easier to spot as their wing-tips are black and their wings split down the middle by a thick band of white. Their call is also loud and distinctive, a sharp, raspy with the pneumonic of “pil-wil-willet” that gave them their namesake.
