If you haven’t been to the Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary at low tide, put it on your list. You can walk all the way out to the beach and you never know what you will see and you’re never disappointed!
I saw this Ruddy Turnstone, and many more, the other day. There were so many on the outer beach scurrying about, it was hard to count.
I love his very distinctive coloring. What do you think?
Yesterday was a gorgeous day so we took a walk down Coast Guard Beach. It was glorious… one of the Top 10 days!
We got part way down the beach and there were some new signs that said, “Nesting Nervous Birds” and “Area Closed.” We were surprised as the area was not closed a few days ago. We stopped and looked around getting ready to turn back.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a Piping Plover in the distance. Something else was scurrying by the water. My camera has an awesome zoom so I was able to take a few photographs of the family of Piping Plovers from afar.
I had never seen a Piping Plover chick before. They were so cute and so tiny. What an experience…
It was pretty cool to see this Semipalmated Plover at Rock Harbor the other day. It was the first one I’ve seen this summer. It was wading in the water back by the boats on the Eastham side of the harbor.
The Semipalmated Plover has a black face, a black collar and orange legs and feet. I love the black-tipped orange bill. According to the Range Map, they spend their winters down south and summers in the Arctic. Maybe he is just passing through on his way up north?
Have you ever seen a Semipalmated Plover?
I had just photographed a Piping Plover wading in the water at Rock Harbor when I saw this other bird nearby. At first, I thought it was another Willet, as they have been very abundant everywhere this summer.
It wasn’t until I got home and was looking on the computer when Phil said, “Look at those yellow legs!” Hmmmm. I quickly looked up on my iBird Pro if Willets have yellow legs. No, they don’t. And there on the iBird Willet page, it described the Greater Yellowlegs as similar but “smaller and slimmer with a more slender bill and yellow legs, and lacking the black and white wing pattern.”
Thank you, IBird Pro for making it so easy to research the Greater Yellowlegs. Beautiful bird, don’t you think?
