Shorebirds and others...

18 comments

Hi everyone,
You all seem to love your garden birds, so I thought you might enjoy seeing some of our East Coast shorebirds. Most of these shots were taken in summer of course, as most species migrate, but some are brave enough to share the winter with us.

Here are some Piping Plovers. They are on the endangered list, as their breeding grounds are often disturbed by beach-goers, dogs and motorized vehicles, quite apart from natural predators. We have protected areas on our local beach though, and that is helping.
http://www.southshorenow.ca/archives/050608/pdf/complete_LP_web%2037.pdf

Compare them to the semi-palmated plover, which is more common, and larger with stronger markings:

A heron on Bell Island, one of the LaHave Islands:

A Lesser Yellowlegs:

A few more, feeding at the head of an inlet near Second Peninsula, Lunenburg:

I see GoY doesn’t like cropped photos – I tend to crop a lot of mine, and thus concentrate on the main subject matter. So we lost a few lesser yellowlegs here! Never mind… you get the idea.

Some oyster catchers on Cape Sable Island, in September, just getting ready to migrate south for the winter. The ones with orange beaks are the parents, and the ones with brown-beige beaks are the juveniles, hatched that year.

Here they are taking off:

A dunlin – they are shy and often solitary:

Here he is with his wife:

A flock of eider ducklings being looked after by a few daycare mums, under the cliffs at Medway Head:

And some adult eiders at Green Bay – the males are the mainly white birds, and are easy to spot and identify:

A cormorant drying its wings, Mahone Bay:

Here is a sanderling – pretty bird, and very common:

And a few more:

One on the wing too:

A pair of ducks out for a waddle on Rissers Beach:

And a flock of different birds taking off in the mist at Cape Sable Island:

Also at Cape Sable Island, a couple of dowitchers, barely discernible in the mist:

More dowitchers, this time with a ruddy turnstone:

I was very lucky to spot a couple of red knots on our local beach last year – here’s one of them:

Hope you enjoyed those! Birds are quite a passion with us, our older son is an ornithologist and a wildlife biologist – we have learned a lot from him over the years, and used to call him our walking encyclopedia when he was a child! So thanks to him for all the identifications!
All the best,
elke

13 Apr, 2009
12 likes

Comments

Lindsay

wow what fantastic pictures! Before my children were born, birdwatching was my main hobby but then it got put on the back burner for a while. Haven't really picked it up again although I enjoy making my garden a place for the birds to visit and when we go on holiday I always try to see what's around. I keep hoping that when i'm less busy birdwatching will come back into my life!

13 Apr, 2009

Bulbaholic

We enjoy watching the sea birds, they can be very entertaining.
Thanks for the pictures, elke.

13 Apr, 2009

Sewingkilla

Great phots, and nice to see birds from a different country thanks elke

13 Apr, 2009

Seaburngirl

I recognised most of those beautiful birds. wonderful photos.

13 Apr, 2009

Elke

Lindsay - I suggest you keep a pair of binoculars on the windowsill and in the car,along with a simple field guide to birds, as we do - you'll soon be making time for watching, and each look only takes seconds!
Glad you all liked these!

13 Apr, 2009

Toto

These are lovely photographs Elke. I too am a birdwatcher and agree with you that a pair on binoculars always handy is the way to go. The only surprise here, is you comment about the Dunlin being solitary, as over here they flock in hundreds, if not thousands.
Thanks for the pics.

13 Apr, 2009

Elke

Interesting, Toto - I have heard of flocks of dunlins, but we only get small numbers here on our local beaches. Perhaps down on Cape Sable Island, which is a migratory stopover, we'd see more. Thanks for the tip.

13 Apr, 2009

Toto

Thanks to you Elke for the lovely pics.

13 Apr, 2009

Donnah

lovely photos enjoyed this blog Thank you Elke

13 Apr, 2009

Spritzhenry

Interesting and great photos! Loved the one with the reflections of the oyster catchers taking off!

13 Apr, 2009

Wagger

Just love the Eider ducks creche! and all the others - thanks, Elke.

13 Apr, 2009

Gilli

Fabulous photos Elke. I love the daycare ducklings. Great blog.. :o)

14 Apr, 2009

Bonkersbon

Thanks for this Elke - fantastic variety gosh I d just spend all day mesmerised by these , we get some as regulars and others as visitors but to see so many in one location such a treat.

Sanderlings are visitors here think they are such an attractive bird some time ago someone ( sorry senior moment cant recall who ) I think photoed one , the clarity of your pics may help to identify or otherwise.

Oh re - cropped photos if you have a photo edit programme and save your cropped pics in those files this reduces the memory size by compressing them , I used to find my camera would take pics way above the 3mb capacity and couldnt get them on Goy till I found this .

14 Apr, 2009

Elke

Thanks for the photo tip, Bonkersbon. I don't think it's an issue of MBs in this case, it has more to do with shape. I often crop mine into long thin photos, to show a line of birds, for instance, without all the beach and sky, and GoY prefers the 4 x 6-type format. That's fine - most of it shows!

14 Apr, 2009