sanderling
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈsændərˌlɪŋ/
- At dusk on a day in early May, sanderlings foraging in a small flock along the New Jersey shore expertly dodge the waves of a falling tide.
- sanderlings forage
Examples
-
Just in time, the sanderlings scatter, flying in all directions.
Academic text (1994) -
In Florida, small flocks of sanderlings and other shorebirds allow people to approach more closely than they do on our northern beaches.
Academic text (1994) -
And some shorebirds, such as sanderlings, increase their weight by 40 percent over two to three weeks.
Academic text (1993) -
At the end of our transect, we find a small flock of sanderlings.
Academic text (1994) -
Female sanderlings that still have sufficient fat reserves will get a head start in egg laying and incubation.
Academic text (1994) -
Over just a five-year period, sanderling daytime foraging rates, like those of plovers, were cut nearly in half.
Academic text (1994) -
The sanderlings must also hear the sound, for they stop foraging and gaze into the darkness.
Academic text (1994) -
The sanderlings watch the jogger, and only when she is thirty feet away do they wheel into the air to land a hundred yards up the beach behind her.
Academic text (1994) -
A flock of sanderlings flew low to the ground beside us, flashing their white bellies as they flittered back and forth.
Fiction book (2002) -
A flock of sanderlings flew low to the ground beside us, flashing their white bellies as they flittered back and forth.
Synonyms
A small bird that runs on sandy beaches and moves south from the Arctic every year
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
The word sanderling comes from the simple word sand and the small ending -ling, the same ending in duckling that means 'small one'. So a sanderling is literally a 'small one of the sand', a small bird that runs along sandy beaches.