Icy blue birds

In Crescent Beach the snowdrops are flowering already, the bush glows with yellow-green lights. And ice imprisons the sloughs and lines the creeks.

Ice shelf over a thin coat of ice on the running creek.

Captured feathers

Who cares if it's cold? This bushy tree doesn't!

It was low tide, and the wide, muddy beach was covered with sandpipers, flying, feeding, flying again, swooping and flashing their white undersides. They didn't seem to mind us, dropping in to feed almost at our feet, flitting away, swirling back, landing in front of us, just behind us, anywhere, as if we were just more innocuous rocks on the beach.

We took hundreds of photos, peeps flying, feeding, even bathing. But it was so cold - so cold! - that I had no feeling in my fingers, and early on, I brushed against the dial on the camera, turning it to my setting for tank photos. Never noticed, of course; there was no time to check the photos as I took them; just to wildly click, click, click, click, over and over for 200-odd photos. Which all turned out blue, deep, deep blue.

So did the ice, and a cute blue wren, and a deep blue sunset. Blue!

I may be able to rescue one or two.

Blue! Gah!