Sunday shorebirding
There was not enough time on Saturday afternoon, when I arrived at St. Shotts beach, to get out the camera and indulge in shorebird photography opportunities.
There was not enough time on Saturday afternoon, when I arrived at St. Shotts beach, to get out the camera and indulge in shorebird photography opportunities.
The 300 shorebirds present was a good number for this beach. The seed was planted. It grew overnight, enhanced by the news that my better-half was going away on Sunday anyway, off to a retreat for several days with her like-minded friends and hobbyists.
It was a long drive back to St. Shotts on the southern tip of the Avalon Peninsula but I knew I was going to do it well before I got out of bed.
It was worth it. After stopping at a number of birding locations in St. Mary’s Bay and then twice on the St. Shotts road to take in the summering snowy owl sitting on hydro pole, and a young rough-legged hawk sitting on the electrical wires, I arrived at St. Shotts. The tide was top high and the shorebirds were resting in a mat on the upper dry part of the beach.
With careful movements I should be able to walk in close enough for a good photography session. Not to be. Enter one merlin being harassed by a sharpshinned hawk. Both these birds, but especially the merlin, are the shorebird’s worst nightmare. This time two hawks were more interested in each other than the shorebird flock that they sent skyward in evasive weaving lines of flight. The shorebirds tried to come back but a couple of close passes by a northern harrier was the final straw for the hawk-fearing shorebirds. The flock stayed away.
I was enjoying the autumn air and being on the beach. Time was my ally. A group of five young surf scoters pattered by. A distant peregrine falcon performed some breathtaking stoops attempting to capture a small bird that got away by diving into a grassy hillside. A late Arctic tern cruised back and forth over the beach surf hunting for small fish.
Eventually the tide started to fall. The waves were not reaching as far up on the beach anymore. Small groups of shorebirds started to return. Flying at breakneck speed they swept past the beach several times before settling down on the wet beach rocks where they froze like statues. This was a precautionary move. If a hawk had been watching them, they wanted to know.
The birds slowly relaxed and began feeding. More flocks repeated this scenario. They wasted no time in hunting for their own tasty marine morsels exposed by the falling tide once the allclear signal was given.
The dunlin, the bird I was most interested in photographing, led the way. With long bills slightly down curved, they probed underneath the rocks hoping to feel the sensation of a creepy crawly with their sensitive bill tip. I saw one tackle a fairly large critter that we call sea lice. It took a couple of seconds to subdue it before swallowing it down
The dunlin, the bird I was most interested in photographing, led the way. With long bills slightly down curved, they probed underneath the rocks hoping to feel the sensation of a creepy crawly with their sensitive bill tip.
whole. It did not skip a beat and went right back to hunting for more.
The shorebirds were working like machines, stopping only momentarily to scan for hawks. A slight twittering noise rose out from the flock as individuals conveyed undecipherable messages to one another. Semipalmated plovers were the most abundant species. They were pulling back on bright green seaweed growing between the rounded beach rocks to see what lay beneath and then nabbing anything moving.
White-rumped sandpipers ran to and fro picking at the bare patches of sand between the rocks. The feeding action was so rapid, you couldn’t see what they were actually getting. A couple of greater yellowlegs stayed in the deep water up to their bellies. They could feed where the small shorebirds could not.
A handful of black-bellied plovers were looking through the dried kelp hove higher up for kelp fly larvae.
The whole mixed flock of shorebirds, each with different feeding functions and different destinations, would take flight in the same moment and fly in unison, twisting and turning high into the sky for a minute or two. Dunlin on their way to wintering areas on the east coast of the United States flew shoulder to shoulder with white-rumped sandpipers on their way to South America.
They all resettled in front of me again. It was probably a false alarm. Once they were certain there was no danger, the shorebirds got right back into the act of feeding.
The birds were so busy, they did not consider me standing still behind a camera on a tripod as a threat. They literally forgot I was there. I appreciated the intimacy they allowed. Plenty of digital frames were exposed on the birds.
St. Shotts beach was a good place to be on Sunday morning.