Back to the Coast

Usually I post pictures I’ve taken the next day, but with the sunshine and bird migration I’m suffering from a sudden wealth of choices. To make matters worse, I find it nearly impossible to sit inside when the sun is out. So, I’m at least a week behind in posting photos. Today’s photos were actually taken at the beach last Friday.

Since I got up so early I stopped at the wetlands before heading out to the beach. There seemed to be a lot more bugs than birds, but the marsh was bursting with the sound of Marsh Wrens staking their claim:

Marsh Wren

Since high tide was relatively late in the day, I started birding from the south end of the beach, Tokeland, not from Bottle Beach. I was hoping to see Loons or Western Grebes here, but I ended up only seeing Greater Scaup, at least I could see them out in the middle of the bay with the doubler on my 500mm lens.

Flock of Greater Scaup

I really wasn’t sure what I’d seen until I got home and could put the photos up on the screen.

Surprisingly there wasn’t a Godwit in sight. Instead, there were a lot of small shorebirds that I would normally expect to see on Bottle Beach. I started by photographing the Dunlin:

Dunlin

But as I was watching a Dunlin foraging in the rocks, I saw a strange bird enter far right and quickly changed my focus:

Ruddy Turnstone and Dunlin

As I sat watching it turn over rocks and shells, I realized it must be a Turnstone, though it wasn’t until I got home and looked in my book that I realized it was the much rarer Ruddy Turnstone.

Ruddy Turnstone

I stayed longer than I expected at Tokeland taking shots of the Turnstones,

Ruddy Turnstone

a good thing, too, because the wind picked up considerably as the day went on and very few birds showed up as a result, though the pelicans obliged with an eye-level flyby in Westport.

Pelican