Buff-breasted sandpiper

Tryngites subruficollis

Summer, and all we fear it can be, is just getting rolling. The cool days of autumn seem a forever away.

Yet buff-breasted sandpipers are probably a few days away from arriving in Kansas on their annual fall migration, which will take them from the Arctic to the pampas region of South America.

Buffs are one of the rarest of the seven species of sandpipers to live in, or migrate through, Kansas every year. Some estimates put the population around 10,000 birds or less.

The 8-inch birds are about the size and color of a mourning dove, and they have have a dove’s neck, head and beak. The brown spotting on a buff’s back is an easy way to tell the difference between the species.

Most buffs will probably have migrated through Kansas by the end of August. Most of the few sightings are on sod farms, which replicate the wide-open spaces where they nest in the Arctic.

This story was originally published July 15, 2016 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Buff-breasted sandpiper."