tip of their bill to locate prey by touch. The long-billed dowitcher, during breeding, consumes large quantities of chironomidae larva and larva of other insects with occasional plant matter and seeds. During migration and in their wintering region, the long-billed dowitcher consumes a far greater range of food types. Dowitchers eat everything from polychaetes to insect larva to crustaceans to mollusks. Also, having night vision, they are known to forage at night during migration. Vocalization The Long-billed dowitcher's main call, mostly heard in flight but also while on ground, is a high, sharp keek sometimes repeated as an accelerating quick double or triple note series. Its second, less common call is a tu given 1-8 times. Its song is described as pee-witch-er, and its alarm call is an explosive KEEK. The long-billed dowitcher is a more vocal shorebird often making a keek or tu call, heard when in feeding flocks unlike the short-billed dowitcher which are generally silent on the ground. Reproduction Male long-billed dowitcher will court females by first singing to them and then compete with other males by perusing the female in flight, displaying an aerial show of speed and agility. After mating, they are known to sing while hovering 15 feet in the air above their territories. Once mated the male and female dowitcher form a pair bond. Long-billed dowitchers nest in wet areas of tall grasses in the troughs of raised mounds and ridges. The nest is a simple depression in the ground usually lined with grass and leaves. Long-billed dowitcher lays four eggs per brood every year having only one brood per season. On rare occasions the long-billed dowitcher will lay three eggs. The eggs are oval to pear shaped and range from being a buff olive to a greenish or blueish glaucous. The eggs are also heavily splotched with varying shades of brown near the base of the large end with the underlying marks being dark gray. Incubation of the eggs is approximately twenty days in which both sexes participate. Long-billed dowitcher chicks are precocial and downy being able to feed themselves within a few hours of hatching. In the long-billed dowitcher it is the male which takes care of the chicks until they have fledged. References External links Long-billed dowitcher - Limnodromus scolopaceus - USGS Patuxent Bird Identification Infocenter Long-billed dowitcher (Limnodromus scolopaceus) - Cornell Lab of Ornithology Long-billed dowitcher species account -