Good news, had an appointment with my doctor today and the elbow is healing well. I was getting concerned as my range progress had stalled a bit and was worried the arm wasn’t going to achieve the mobility I wanted/needed. Doc is still confident on nearly full range once they get the rest of the swelling released and break apart the scar tissue. I predict some fun therapy sessions in the near future. The best news is they released me to start strength training in my sessions and ….wait for it … wait for it .. I can “start” running again. This brought an internal chuckle from me and a stern disapproving look from Linda. Thankfully she didn’t reveal I’ve been running for weeks hehehe. Going to let Brad take the helm today while I get ready for a celebratory, and now, guilt free training run. Just hoping I can get back to the running efficiency of his featured subjects!
Take it away Brad…
No one ever said bird photography would be easy. The Intrigued corporate employee handbook doesn’t mention it either. Yes, much of the time my subjects are sitting still, nicely perched on a branch or twig out in the open. A few are sitting on the ground as pretty as you please. Sometimes they are flying gracefully through the air on a predictable line so I can follow them easily. But more often than not, they are behind twigs so the camera can’t get an easy focus lock. Or flitting between branches. Or hiding in tall grass.
Not this time. This past February, Jan and I were taking a morning walk along Sunset Beach, adjacent to Bird Island, in North Carolina. The sky was overcast and the wind was blowing at a constant 15-20MPH straight along the coast from the South. With waves crashing ashore, and sand blowing in our faces (yes, I had a filter on the front of both camera lenses) we were lucky to find a rather spastic set of little birds. They are constantly chasing the surf line, running up and down with the waves in what should be a predictable pattern. In fact, “chasing the surf” is the precise behavior listed in the bird books to aid with identification. If you’ve ever seen a certain Pixar animated movie short, you will understand . . . it rhymes with “hyper”.
Hit the jump to read more about these spastic little birds!
Sanderling (Calidris alba) legs are almost a blur when they run to or from the surf. I really had to crank up the shutter speed to be able to freeze their motion. Unfortunately, it was a cloudy day and backlit, and I had to go stratospheric on the ISO to get the higher shutter speeds I wanted. I’m still not a fan of high four-digit ISO values, so I tried to strike a balance.
If it looks like these little birds are always running, it’s because they are. This group of sanderlings must practice together because in most of the photos we took, their legs seemed to be synchronized. I know sanderlings are capable of flight, but on this very windy day, all they did was run to and fro.
Sanderlings’ primary food source are the small crabs, and other critters, that reveal themselves (accidentally or not) as the surf retreats. Wait too many seconds and the crabs have burrowed back into the quickly hardening sand. That’s why sanderlings chase the surf out and run just ahead of it on the way back up the beach. They will also eat anything else stranded when the surf retreats: worms, small mollusks, and even horseshoe crab eggs. Luckily, tourists with cameras are not on their menu.
Sometimes the scale and size of featured birds gets a little lost in the zooming and cropping process. Luckily, this sanderling was near a ring-billed gull for size comparison. I’m not even sure the sanderling measures up to the gull’s ankle (the part that looks like a backward knee). In other words, sanderlings are less than 8“ long, half that tall, and usually weigh less than four ounces.
Earlier, I mentioned a certain Pixar animated short containing sandpipers. Sanderlings are a bit larger than sandpipers with a clean white breast, dark legs, and very brown feathers everywhere else. Sandpipers have a dusty breast, yellow legs, and greyish-brown feathers. Both have similar shoreline behavior, and if they aren’t holding still, it may be difficult to tell them apart. All of the sanderlings we saw were in their non-breeding plumage: light grey and white below.
Sanderlings nest in the arctic, usually right on the ground, in the open, next to fresh water. They are mostly monogamous, but females have been known to mate with multiple males during a breeding season. A sanderling pair will raise 3-4 dull green or olive-brown eggs at a time. After 23-27 days, the new sanderlings look like miniature adults with dark legs and bills. If confronted by a predator while nesting, the adults will sit motionless until the last possible second when they feign injury and fake limp away from the nest, drawing the predator after them. What great parents!
Once we were tuned into seeing sanderlings, we spotted them all up and down the beach. They didn’t seem to be aware, or the least wary, of us. When we tried to get closer for better photos, I don’t think we phased them one bit. They simply kept up their surf-chasing routine. I’m pretty sure they knew they could outrun us if tested. Even dogs on the beach didn’t seem to bother them, or vice versa. The gulls along the beach had a much more obvious reaction to dogs and people than the sanderlings did. Regardless of what the sky and wind were doing above them, these little sanderlings continued their metronome-like chasing and retreating process all the way down the beach.
“Hey, I think I saw something yummy down there. Follow me!”
It’s time to go clean the filters and see how much sand got into places I didn’t want it to get into.
Thank you for reading. If you want to see more bird photos from our South Carolina winter escape, please visit here.
Credits:
Thanks again to Jan and Allyson for proofreading and editing. Thanks to Jan for some of the photos in this article.
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