Blanquito, or There and Back Again (and again, and again…)

A breathless call from a friend and colleague sent me out of the building and down the path at record speed; fire wouldn’t have moved me faster. “Christine was trying to find you,” she said. “She spotted Blanquito on Muddy Trail.”

Had she delivered the news in person, I might have kissed her, irrespective of HR admonishments against such behavior. Given the situation, my enthusiasm would have been forgiven; I’d been waiting a year for this reunion, and this last week in particular had me on tenterhooks. It was getting past time, and though I’d guarded against negative thoughts to this point, a few managed to sneak around the edges. What if something happened? What if Blanquito didn’t come back?

Last year was the same, as was the year before that. Around the second week of August, worry began to gnaw at me, but just before it evolved into full-blown anxiety, Blanquito reappeared and reclaimed his patch of marsh as nonchalantly as any seasonal sun-chaser reopening the beach house for another summer down the shore (of course, none of them propel themselves more than 1,500 miles through the air to get here).

As with the previous two years, I needn’t have been concerned. Blanquito kept to his schedule, and on August 14, 2023, my fears transformed into unbounded joy as I watched him contentedly hunt along the marsh like it was an event that barely warranted consideration, and not the culmination of an extraordinary set of circumstances that once again brought the two of us together.

We first crossed paths on August 10, 2020. I was 200 feet away and two stories up, looking down into the marsh from my vantage on The Wetlands Institute’s upper deck. I’d just stepped out to catch a little fresh air and scan the grounds to see what—or, more accurately, who—I could find, and my eyes quickly landed on an unusual character. It was small, a shorebird of some kind—plover by the look of it, chunky and round—but its color was off. Way off. To the naked eye, the bird presented as almost entirely white—pure and intense like sun-bleached clam shells. I raised my binoculars for a better look, and the adrenaline rush hit me. This wasn’t something I’d seen here before. This was something new.

But not entirely. In its uniqueness it still held a hint of the familiar—the outlines of a pre-school classmate filled in with the form of an adult, still vaguely visible under the layers of time. Who was this bird? I had to get a closer look.

I ducked inside for my camera and headed at a half run down the Institute’s salt marsh trail, cycling through possible suspects on my way. Could be a Piping Plover, perhaps, or maybe even—I hesitated to think—the much rarer Snowy Plover. This bird was too pale for either of those, though; you could be blinded by the August sun reflecting off its feathers—the Platonic Ideal of white. But what, then? Wilson’s Plover, Semipalmated Plover—nothing I knew fit. My mental shorebird catalog was coming up empty. I needed an answer, and if luck was with me, I’d soon have it.

That was the catch. Luck. I was fairly confident I could figure out who this bird was if I got a decent look. It had been out of sight for a few minutes, though, and that was long enough for it to have disappeared. Anyone who’s ever tried to re-find a bird after even the briefest span of time knows there’s a good chance it will have flown before you manage to get eyes back on it—and all the knowledge and experience in the world can’t help you ID a bird that’s not there. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “birds have wings, and they like to use them.” Many a birder has lowered binoculars in abject defeat and been forced to consign a tantalizing mystery bird to the perpetually growing list of ones that got away. All who seek the company of feathered friends know this fear; for most, it reaches the level of existential crisis. All too frequently, such adventures end in both figurative and literal darkness, the faithfully obsessed having chanted the birder’s mantra “let’s just give it five more minutes” at intervals that far exceeded the originally appointed duration.

Needless to say, I was concerned. My heart raced as I approached the spot where the bird was resting mere moments ago. Would it still be there? Or would it have vanished like many before it, headed for parts unknown and taking its identity—and a good bit of my mental well-being—with it?

I held my breath, stepped off the trail through a break in the vegetation, and scanned the marsh.

And there it was, foraging along the mud flats. Right where I’d left it.

From this distance, the bird’s pure white gave way to patches of color, and I could make out several features that brought its plover shape into sharp focus and announced its identity like a name tag. I knew this bird; it was as familiar to me as kith and kin. In spite of its unusual ensemble, there was no mistaking it: I was looking at a Semipalmated Plover.

Semipalmated Plovers are handsome and charismatic little shorebirds—their bodies tan above and white below, set firmly on orange legs and adorned with a black tiara and necklace—and instantly recognizable. This one retained the orange legs, some of the tan feathers along its head, back, and wings, and a hint of the tiara, but the rest of its body was drained of color. Surprising, certainly, but not unheard of. This was textbook leucism.

Leucism is a genetic anomaly that causes a loss of pigment in feathers, fur, or skin. In birds, it can be restricted to a single feather, cover its entire body, or fall anywhere in between. It’s not uncommon; reports of such animals abound. Over the years, I’ve come across leucistic Robins, finches, falcons, sparrows, and ducks myself—and heard stories of even more—but I’d never seen such an extreme example. I stole a few more minutes to watch this extraordinary little visitor and take some documentation photos (for myself as well as anyone else who might be interested; I couldn’t have imagined what was going to happen) then headed back down the trail. Before setting down to work, I submitted an eBird report about the sighting—August 10, 2020, 9:20 AM, leucistic Semipalmated Plover— attached a photo or two, wrote up a quick post for The Wetlands Institute’s FaceBook page, and figured that would be the end of the story.

And for seven months, it was.

The afternoon of March 30, 2021, I received a remarkable message from a field biologist with Aves Uruguay—a woman named Agustina Medina. She’d spotted this same plover just the day before along the coast of Maldonado—a straight-line distance of some 5,200 miles from the Institute’s marshes in Stone Harbor. Even more incredibly, it was exactly where she’d first encountered it in December of 2019. She’d been tracking its movements since then, had been looking for other reports of an unusual Semipalmated Plover, and reached out after finding my record on eBird. She shared a photo of the bird—Blanquito, she called him, Little White One—and there was no doubt. The likelihood of two birds displaying identical patterns of leucism was nonexistent; much to our mutual surprise (and delight), this was the same plover. She asked me to keep an eye out and get in touch if I saw him again. Though I didn’t expect to, I agreed. And that was that.

Or so I thought. Blanquito had other ideas, though. On August 11, 2021—a year and a day after I first spotted him—the peripatetic plover reappeared, foraging in the marsh mud like it wasn’t any big deal. No fuss, no fanfare, just another day in the life of a migrating shorebird. It took a moment for my brain to register what my eyes were seeing, and another moment for me to believe it—but it was clear. Against the odds, Blanquito had returned. I was exhilarated—and immediately contacted Agus to share the news.

For the next ten days, I spent as much time with him as I could. I showed him to everyone at the office, shared his incredible story to any visitor who would listen, took dozens of photos and submitted multiple reports. I wanted people to know him, to connect to this remarkable bird and understand the magnitude of his journey. I wanted them to share my awe that somehow Blanquito had found this little speck of marsh even once, let alone a second time, and that we were fortunate enough to discover him here. But most of all I hoped that some, like me, would fall in love.

And then, as suddenly as he appeared, he vanished. He’d stayed with us for ten days, gotten everything he needed for the next step in his journey, and then continued on his way. By December, he was back in Uruguay, safely installed in his coastal winter home; Agus and I have been trading reports ever since. Every August, I watch for him to show up in the marsh at the Institute, and every December, she keeps her eye on Maldonado’s coast. Blanquito has yet to let either of us down. He was back again this August, and with a little luck he’ll rejoin Agus in Uruguay for the winter.

Like most shorebirds, Semipalmated Plovers are marathon migrators. They summer in Alaska and northern Canada and spend the winter deep along the South American coast—a perilous venture that pushes against the edges of endurance. It’s not just the distance that stands against them. There are myriad aerial and terrestrial predators that would gladly snaffle up a shorebird snack. They have to find enough food to power them along the length of their journey, and safe places to rest when their bodies are spent—while habitat loss steadily eats away at both resting and feeding grounds. Then there are the vagaries of weather, the effects of climate change, the impact of human disturbance… the list goes on. Most migratory birds have about a 50/50 chance of living through a year; the odds of surviving year after year are long indeed. Intellectually, I know this. I’ve seen the range maps, calculated the distance, I understand the hazards they face. But it was all in the abstract, a concept held at arm’s length to be marveled about. Blanquito changed that, giving form to the intangibility of migration, bringing it to life in all its mystery and wonder.

For most of us, our relationship with birds ends at the level of species. We can differentiate between them, but barring some sort of external identifier (like a series of color bands), we can’t recognize individuals—so the chance to experience a deep, one-to-one connection with a specific bird is rare. Blanquito afforded me a precious opportunity to form an intimate bond with one of these extraordinary creatures, to share this little corner of the world with him, if only briefly. For those moments, at least, I was sincerely happy. When he at last continued on his way, I silently thanked him for finding me, wished him Godspeed, and hoped I would see him again.

It is perhaps foolhardy to bind one’s happiness to the fate of a single little bird—delicate and vulnerable in the extreme. Every summer, the risk of heartbreak hangs over me. Were Blanquito to fail to return… but that’s something I don’t care to contemplate. And what choice do I have anyway? The only escape from the crushing blow of his eventual passing from this world would be to erase my memory of him entirely. Though that would save me from future pain, it would do so at too great a cost. To truly live is to revel in the exuberance of love and accept the inevitable suffering of loss—and to embrace both equally. It is the knowledge of life’s impermanence that brings profound joy to the act of living—to exist in the moment, no matter its brevity or extent, and not dwell on the eventual end. If a broken heart is the cost of having my own life immeasurably enriched by Blanquito’s presence in it, so be it. Better to have had the chance to make such a profound connection to this remarkable little bird than to sacrifice the experience out of fear.

Blanquito’s migratory travels reflect the journey we each take along our own path. We set out upon it with courage, hope, and faith, and though the way ahead may be hazy, we strive to wander it with grace. More than that, though, his regular reappearances in the salt marshes of Stone Harbor and along Uruguay’s rocky coast are reaffirmations of the power of life over death, and vital reminders that if we live with Nature rather than against Her, if we give Her space to thrive and grow, She will continue to sustain the great panoply of life that depends on Her—from tiny travelers like Blanquito to those of us who stand, spellbound, in their company.