Just because I’ve started working on ‘Eagle Country’ I can’t forget about the trip to Vancouver Island in August as we still have a ways to go with that one….and when I’m finished it, well there are a couple of trips we took to southern Alberta that I have masses of pictures of….so will have no shortage of material for the next few months!
Picking up where I left off, I returned to the beach around supper time, on my own……
and as I started walking….I wondered where all the shorebirds had gone!
I had been wandering along the edge of the water and there was not a bird to be seen….then something caught my eye up on the beach….and sure enough….there they were…all sheltering in the lee of any clumps of vegetation they could find. I’m not sure why….it wasn’t exceptionally windy or anything like that….
Here are a couple of Western Sandpipers along with a pair of Semi-palmated Sandpiper…
and another bunch of Westerns…
Guess I got a bit too close!
wasn’t me this time! They were very restless with groups flying back and forth….settling down and then rushing off again….
after there not being any shorebirds in sight by the water – suddenly they were everywhere.
and then little ‘puddles’ of them would appear scattered over the sand.
more patches of shorebirds
and then I spotted it again……that juvenile Ruff…
it was poking about in the piles of flotsam……
I’m assuming it was the same one….surely there weren’t two of these rare birds there! See all those little black spots? they are bugs….I think that is what the shorebirds were busy feeding on….
this is probably the best shot I got of it….
This one gives a good size comparison with those Western Sandpipers.
by now I was figuring I’d probably used up my allotted time and my husband would be wondering where I was, so I headed back towards the campground.
still time to take a few scenic shots of the beach though….
and another cute little grouping of Sandpipers, Plovers and beach vegetation.
and just one more…after all this is something I’d never seen before in my life….so probably never will again!
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