The first bird of interest stuck out like a sore thumb amongst some Willets. Usually I see Marbled Godwits fairly regularly but this year this was the first one I have seen.
Marbled Godwit.
A bad picture but I am posting it to illustrate the cinnamon underwing. This bird was easily IDed as a Marbled Godwit for other reasons including it's general size and fairly uniform coloration but I wanted to point out that the best diagnostic for godwits is the underwing. Bar-Tailed Godwits have a speckled gray underwing, Hudsonian Godwits have a black underwing and Black-tailed Godwits have a white underwing.
Next we pulled up on an extremely large aggregation of shorebirds at Cut 4. The below shot just shows a fraction of the birds, there was many more to the right but I wasn't about to take off my telephoto lens to take the wider angle shot. We spent a good 45 minutes scanning all the birds which included 6-7 more Marbled Godwits, Whimbrel, thousands of Dowitchers, peeps of 3 kinds, Oystercatchers, Ruddy Turnstones, and Black Skimmers.
In the below picture you can see "Old Baldy" in the background.
Cropped picture below with Godwits and Whimbrels.
Despite trying hard to find a Stilt SP or maybe a White-rump, we couldn't find any. And then just like that they all decided to leave. Probably the tide going out made them decide to get a snack before calling it a night.
Then driving back on the beach, we found this group that included a smaller bird we thought might be something interesting. However, when it flew it revealed it was in fact a dowitcher. Just goes to show birds can play tricks on you when they are standing next to different species. We had just seen thousands of Dowitchers but then seeing this bird solo next to a Whimbrel and some Willet made us wonder.
Great times. Thanks Harry!
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