There is a single accepted New Zealand record of the buff-breasted sandpiper: one bird, at Waionui Inlet on the southern Kaipara Harbour, in March 2014. It was photographed, submitted to the relevant records committee, and accepted. The bird itself had presumably arrived via a navigational error of considerable magnitude, given that its normal annual route runs between Arctic tundra and the Argentinian pampas, with New Zealand nowhere on the itinerary and the Pacific Ocean representing a meaningful detour. Buff-breasted sandpipers breed on high Arctic tundra across Alaska, northern Canada, and parts of Siberia. The species is unusual among waders in preferring dry ground: on its breeding grounds it selects well-drained tundra with sparse vegetation, and on migration it uses dry grasslands, short-turf fields, and ploughed agricultural ground rather than the mudflats and wetland margins that most shorebirds require. The silhouette is more plover than sandpiper: a rounded head, short bill, large dark eyes, and an upright stance. The face and underparts are warm buff-orange, the back a precise pattern of brown and buff scales that looks, at distance, like expensive upholstery fabric. It is a bird that looks more considered than most vagrant shorebirds, which makes its presence at the Kaipara particularly incongruous. Breeding behaviour is notable. Males display on leks, making this the only North American wader species to use this system. Groups of males gather and perform elaborate wing displays to attract females, raising wings to expose striking white underwing linings. Females choose a mate and then handle nest incubation and chick rearing entirely without male assistance. Males may visit multiple leks in a season. The practical outcome is that male display quality drives reproductive success in a way that most paired shorebirds never experience. The species was once abundant enough to be shot commercially in the nineteenth century. Market hunting, combined with loss of native grassland along migration routes and conversion of the South American pampas, brought numbers close to collapse before hunting protections were introduced. Recovery has been partial and slow. Current estimates range from 16,000 to 84,000 birds, a spread wide enough to reflect genuine uncertainty about the count rather than confidence in any particular figure. New Zealand's relationship with this species is a single record from a single bird that went the wrong way across the Pacific in the autumn of 2014. What became of it after the photograph was taken is not documented.