More Shorebirds

Although I love the Spring migration of shore birds because the sheer number of birds delights me, that doesn’t mean that the photographer in me doesn’t try to capture the beauty of each bird.

Since the birds naturally flock together for protection, it’s hard to get shots of individual birds, shots without stray body parts cluttering up the landscape. When you take over 400 shots in a few hours, though, you can usually manage to find a few shots where you can crop the picture and focus on a single bird, like this shot of a Western Sandpiper,

Western Sandpiper

a slightly larger Sanderling

,

Sanderling

an even larger Dunlin in breeding colors,

Dunlin

and a Short-Billed Dowitcher,

Short-Billed Dowitcher

the largest bird I saw on Bottle Beach the day I was there. Although these birds generally were seen with members of their own species, they all seemed to be migrating together.

I had to drive down the road to Tokeland to get pictures of the larger Marbled Godwits ,

Marbled Godwits

a bird that winters on our coast and migrates to Montana and central Canada to breed in the summer.