It was a very windy evening today but this didn’t stop me to visit the Green Island Wetlands once more. I knew there wouldn’t be many small perching birds around. The water level is still lower than the last couple years and this is great for shore birds and waders who need shallow-water or mudflat habitat. The wind didn’t seem to bother them much, the light was soft, and I was glad that I went out.
If you think identifying gulls is a difficult task, you haven’t tried to identify sandpipers yet! It wasn’t the first time that I had a ‘fling’ of Pectoral Sandpipers in front of the lens but other species are very similar and sometimes I have some doubts left about my findings. It helps to have a good library of bird guides, printed or digital. The Pectoral Sandpiper breeds on arctic tundra from western Alaska across far northern Canada to the Hudson Bay. They spend the winter in South America. I watched about a dozen birds in front of me feeding, bathing, and preening. At times they all took off together, flew with rapid wing beats a few rounds but returned to the same area.