Birds and Nature

Yesterday we had the first truly cool day, only in the 70's, in more than 2 months so I drove down to the lower Arkansas Valley (which has been in upper 90's to 100+) to look for migrating birds.  I stopped at Fowler Sewage Ponds where I found the best assortment and number of migrating shorebirds this trip--there is nothing like sewer ponds for shorebird action.  I was delighted to find several, at least 3 or 4 Solitary Sandpipers in various sections of these sewage ponds including the one in the top pic. The bottom pic shows one of the Semipalmated Sandpipers--CORRECTION: this is a juvenile Least Sandpiper (thanks to Christian Nunes for catching this). Also there were Western and Baird's Sandpipers, a few Greater Yellowlegs, dozens of Killdeer and some Wilson's Phalarope. SeEtta

Here is a still pic of the Solitary Sandpiper in the video clip. SeEtta

I have been hassling with this blog site to get this posted for the last 4 days! I found this Solitary Sandpiper loafing at my friend's pond last Saturday. It looks like it lost all but the stub of one leg. The noises you hear from the audio are from blackbirds nearby as this sandpiper made know audible sounds even when it opened and closed it's beak. Wow, According to ,"The Solitary Sandpiper lays its eggs in the tree nests of several different song birds..."--that surprised me. SeEtta