A beach walk

Today's weather was sunny and mild, so I hit the beach and walked to Seal Rock. Our Pacific beaches are vast, and sparsely populated with humans and pet dogs, but a great place to walk and enjoy nature.

The bottom 2 photos show the beach heading north and south. The middle photo is the intertidal zone in Seal Rock.

The top 2 photos are birds of note. The black oystercatcher has the long red bill. This morning, I watched a pair of them taking baths at the water's edge. A pigeon guillemot is perched atop a rock.

Living on a flyway

Spring brings north-bound migrations of songbirds, raptors, seabirds and shorebirds to the Pacific coast. While we have seen many flocks of seabirds flying north out at sea, they are too far away to photograph. However, walking on the beach in early spring we are often rewarded by close encounters with a variety of shorebirds in breeding plumage.

Today, a northwest wind was blowing, and most flocks of shorebirds were flying low, within a few feet of the beach. I soon realized that if I crouched down, the birds would fly closer to me. Some came with 10 feet. Most of the shorebirds kept flying, but a few stopped and let me photograph them.

Semi-palmated plovers and western sandpipers are the shorebirds in the bottom two photos. The semi-palmated plover looks like a miniature version of its relative, the killdeer, with one less black band. Migration is exhausting work, and feeding along the way is serious business, as can be seen by the plovers' bills probing the sand for prey. The top photo is a pair of Caspian terns.