It’s been kind of a long Summer.  The Myasthenia Gravis has been heavily limiting as far as photography goes, but that doesn’t mean I’m without ability and that doesn’t mean I can’t push myself from time to time.  It just means that pushing myself sometimes comes with a short term cost.  

This weekend was kind of worth the work.  

Kind of really worth the work.

All in all, it was three days worth of photography, some of it difficult, some of it ridiculously easy.  Heading down to the beach near low tide can be very effective– small sandpipers will hang out near the shore or in shallow pools to feed.  This Dowitcher, for example:

Was about 30′ away, which is how I got such a nice shot of it.

Snowy Egrets are getting ready to head out, but aren’t quite gone yet:

This Semipalmated Plover was digging in the dirt, and you can still see the remnants on its beak:

Extensive activity is still difficult for me– the more I exhaust myself the more I get double vision so I’ve been avoiding situations in which the photographs might be easier or simpler to work with, but that didn’t work so well this weekend– the beach was blowing in my eyes which irritates them, and there was bright sun which also does irritation.  So most of these photos were done with one eye closed and a lot of hope.  

I think they paid off.

I was hoping to get American Golden Plovers.  I didn’t succeed but I did get such gorgeous sights of Black-Bellied Plovers that I didn’t mind so much:

Similarly, I can’t argue with these shots of a Sanderling feeding on the shore:

Speaking of Sanderlings, you’ll also see a smaller bird, the Semiplamated Sandpiper.  I put a lot of effort into getting this side by side photo where you could see the differences.  Sanderling is lighter and larger:

And here you get the semipalmated next to the larger, and with a darker, greyer, head, white rumped sandpiper:

Other white-rumped sandpipers are here:

And just to confuse things, the western sandpiper looks a hell of a lot like the semipalmated, but with more red on its wings:

The spotted sandpiper, on the other hand, is a bit bigger.  In the Fall, it’s easily identified by the stark white “comma” shape by the front of its wings:

And sometimes you only get to see sandpipers in flight.  This photo contains three of the sandpipers we’ve talked about earlier:

I’ll explain in the comments how to ID them but first I’ll make this a mini advanced birder quiz.  Can any of you ID the three birds in this photo?

I’m not certain about this one: I think this might be a greater and lesser yellowlegs in the same shot, but I’m only about 75% on that.  What do you all think?

Finally, I kind of love this shot: I was photographing a semipalmated sandpiper as it took flight and I figured for practice I’d just try to track it.  Not easy, but fun to do sometimes.  When I looked at the photos later I realized it was pissing off a flock of yellow legs.  I have a series of shots of it flying, flying over them, them getting annoyed, at them calming down again.  This was the apex of it, with maximum proximity to the yellowlegs group, and maximum annoyance on their part:

As usual, these are all smaller versions of the photos.  There are much bigger ones on my web site, and all of them are clickable, getting to the larger shot.  

As usual, feel free to treat this as an open birds and birding thread.  I haven’t been able to bird as much as I’d like lately so I’d love to get vicarious birding pleasure from the rest of you.  What have you been seeing lately?