On April 21 I discovered a small group of shorebirds at the Cap Sante Marina.  I was somewhat surprised because I hadn’t seen that many shorebirds this past winter, and they had been conspicuously absent at the marina.

I retrieved my camera and approached the flock, but hadn’t noticed a Killdeer which spooked and flew, vocalizing and frightening the other shorebirds which also flew.  They made a couple of circuits then settled down again, and I was able to approach them quite closely.  I had also brought my 1.7x tele-extender which I rarely use.  But not all the photos I took used the extender.

So here are some of the photos of the Dunlin that I took:

The birds often appear to be sleeping, but there always seems to be at least one eye open which misses nothing!

And my final photo of a Dunlin, in this posture is here for a reason…

After I took a lot of photos, I realized that one of the shorebirds appeared to be slightly different from the others.  It didn’t mix well with the others and had more of the reddish-brown on its cheeks and crown.  So I concentrated on taking some good photos of it in the hopes it might not be a Dunlin.

Paydirt!  I sent a couple of the photos to a birding friend who is much more talented at identification than I am and was told that the bird was a Western sandpiper, a bird that I have never knowingly photographed.  And since I had focused on the bird I now have a nice group of really good photos of one!