Spring Storm on the Coast

After looking at weather forecasts, I wasn’t too optimistic about Wednesday’s trip to the coast, but I’d promised Ruth I’d help her to deliver Martin bird boxes to the beach. Needless to say, the weather turned out even worse than I’d expected.

At eight o’clock, I managed to capture this shot of this Least Sandpiper, which, thanks to my new camera, actually looks much better than it did in real life.

Least Sandpiper

Note the raindrops caught mid-air on the left side of the photo.

Unfortunately, it got darker and darker as the day wore on, as seen in this unadjusted shot of Wesport Jetty,

Storm on Jetty

which I decided NOT to hike as I was having trouble just seeing through my glasses despite wearing my baseball cap and rain hood.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the weather, we got see a lot of interesting birds closer than we would usually see them. Sometimes, as with this Pigeon Guillemot, when they were close enough you could even get a decent picture.

PigeonGuillemot

Or of a personal favorite, this Common Loon in breeding colors:

Common Loon in Breeding Colors

I’ll have to admit that I felt blessed to see more Common Loons in breeding colors yesterday than I’ve ever seen before.

I also so more Black-Bellied Plovers, and closer than I’ve ever managed to get before,

Black-BelliedPlovers

but it was so dark it was impossible to get the kind of detail you need in a photograph.

On out way home we circled Brady Loop to see if we could spot the Ospreys building their nest. I’m pretty sure we could can conclude that this is an active breeding pair:

Osprey  Breeding

I suppose you could make the argument that I had a better day than I would have had sitting home in front of a computer, but you would have had a hard time convincing me of that at times when my fingers felt like they were turning into icicles.