Pectoral Sandpipers, Upper Mississippi Valley, Green Island Wetlands, Iowa
Last weekend ended with a short visit in the Green Island Wetlands, the area 40 miles south of our home that includes a wildlife preserve and a mix of lakes and marshland, separated from the main channel of the Mississippi River by dikes.
I saw Wood Ducks in their best mating mood, Sandhill Cranes, some pairs of Canada Geese with little goslings, Hooded Mergansers, a number of Pied-billed Grebes, and again two migrating Greater Yellowlegs.
As the sun got ready to set, a last drive along the gravel road on the west side of the wetlands led to the discovery of 30 Pectoral Sandpipers, foraging in a big puddle at the edge of a field. Their breeding grounds are high up in the arctic tundra of Canada and they obviously stopped at Green Island for some re-fueling. Their bills probed into the water and mud with high frequency in search for invertebrates. I used my car as a blind and moved slowly in the field towards the puddle. The sandpipers didn’t seem to take any notice of my presence and kept feeding.
Moments like that keep me going and feed my passion for bird watching and reporting about it here in the blog. The Pectoral Sandpipers spent the winter down in South America and their long journey to the breeding grounds up on the arctic tundra is just amazing.
I shot this at 850 mm with the 1.4 teleconverter attached to the Sigma 150-600 S lens. A small, cosmetic crop was applied to the final image.