Peeping peeps

They scurry along, just at the edge of the incoming tide, feet in the water, stitching the sand under the waves with sharp bills, always in a hurry. I never see them swallow; their prey is tiny, even microscopic*. (Which accounts for the rush; it takes a lot of mouthfuls to make a meal.) They chatter contentedly among themselves as they go, "Peep, peep, peep!"  And then suddenly, they all leap into the air together, the flock circles a couple of times, flashing white and black as they turn, then they flit far down the shore, to land and repeat the performance. "Peep, peep, peep!"

And they all look more or less alike. Little brown birds with spindly legs, some yellow (at least those are easily recognized) some black. Some have short beaks, some long, maybe curved.

And they always seem to be between us and the light, sometimes mere silhouettes to our unaided eyes.

These were busy at Oyster Bay at near high tide.

A very small bird, foraging alone.

Sanderlings, maybe? Peeps, anyhow.

Dowitchers, maybe the long-billed dowitchers. (Short-billed dowitchers also have long bills.)

Not peeps. Bonaparte's gulls. Black heads, red legs. Just resting here; they eat mainly insects in breeding season.

Time to move along.

*From All About Birds: Western Sandpipers, like other peep, eat “biofilm,” a frothy, scumlike mixture of diatoms, microbes, organic detritus, and sediment.

Least Sandpipers have a typical sandpiper diet: they "eat small invertebrates such as amphipods, isopods, gastropods, horseshoe crab eggs, water fleas, midges and flies, beetles, and dragonflies. They peck at prey on the surface and probe damp mud for buried prey, using the surface tension of the water to transport the item quickly from their bill tips to their mouths."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Corren a lo largo de la playa mientras sube la marea, con las patas en unos centímetros de agua, penetrando repetidamente la arena con sus picos agudos; como que siempre tienen prisa. Nunca los he visto tragarse nada; su presa es miniatura, hasta microscópica*, lo que explica el apuro; se requieren muchas bocadas para completar una comida. Discursan tranquilos mientras trabajan, un constante "Pío, pío, pío." Y de repente todos juntos se lanzan al aire, la bandada da una vuelta, mostrando plumas blancas y negras al cambiar de dirección, y rapidamente vuelan a un punto distante en la costa para volver a explorar la arena de la orilla. "¡Pío, pío, pío!"

Y es difícil distinguirlos; todas las especies de estas aves playeras se parecen. Pajaritos de color café con patas largas, unas amarillas (por lo menos, estos pájaros se pueden identificar), unas negras. Unas tienen picos largos, otras cortos, algunas tienen picos curvos. 

Y parece que siempre, o casi siempre, se nos presentan con la luz de fondo, haciéndolas aparecer ante nuestros ojos como siluetas en movimiento continuo.

Estas aves playeras buscaban su comida mientras subía la marea en Oyster Bay.

1. Un pajarito, muy chico, solitario.
2. Correlimos, posiblemente.
3. Agujetas, posiblemente las de picos largos. (Pero las de picos cortos también tienen los picos largos.)
4. Estas son gaviotas de Bonaparte. Tienen cabezas negras, patas rojas. Descansan aquí; en la época reproductiva comen principalmente los insectos.
5. Hora de ir a la próxima sección de la playa.

*De AllAboutBirds: "Los correlimos de Alaska Western Sandpipers, como otros correlimos, comen "película biológica", una mezcla espumosa de diatomea, microbios, restos orgánicos, y sedimentos.

El correlimos menudillo "come invertebrados pequeños tales como anfípodos, isópodos, caracoles marinos, huevos de cangrejo, "piojos acuáticos", moscos y moscas, escarabajos y libélulas. Cogen presa en la superficie y buscan presa enterrada entre lodo húmedo, usando la tensión de superficie del agua para trasportar el material rapidamente desde la punta del pico hasta la boca."

Bird silhouettes on tinted mud

Mud. We dried our boots overnight, and today it took us each an hour to get them clean again. And we had been so careful! But what can you expect when you walk along the shore of a place called "Mud Bay"?

Mud Bay is the inside tip of Boundary Bay. Here, a map might help:

Boundary Bay forms the southern shore of the Fraser Delta. From the tip of the Tsawwassen Peninsula, at Point Roberts (USA), to Kwomais Point across the water, it measures about 13 km. From that same tip to the inner shore, at Mud Bay Station, it's 17 km. (At low tide, it is considerably smaller.)

See that amphipod-like blue-green shape at the top of the bay? That's all mud. And at the interior end, where the Serpentine and the Nicomekl rivers drop silt from the farms of the Fraser Valley, is Mud Bay Station. Here the railway turns to skirt the shoreline on its way to the US, marching straight across a sea of mud to cut the corner. And this is our destination. There are walking and biking paths around the hawk fields, but we are looking for the mud dwellers on the shore.

Boundary Bay is a prime birding spot; Mud Bay may be the best part of it. On this visit, we saw large flocks of red-wing blackbirds (the females have arrived, and they're all singing and chattering at once as they sort out nesting spots among the dry grasses), several great blue herons, a cacophony or two of crows, and a couple of hawks. And that's all before we even got to the shore.

Grey mud, then grey and orange water with birdy sprinkles. Straight ahead, Crescent Beach. It's about 3 PM, but the sun is already low in the southwest.

Most of our photos were silhouettes. These are long-billed dowitchers, and one green-winged teal.

Green-winged teal, much lightened up. I hadn't seen one for years; this time, there were several large flocks.

Long-billed dowitchers. Look closely; the one in front is pulling a worm out of the mud. The little tubes sticking up here and there are worms, too.

Northern pintails, pairing up. The males have the long tail, and the white bib; the females are "normal" ducks.

The railroad trestle bridge across the bay. I liked the way the warm sunlight tinted the mud.

By the way, that's deep stuff. I took one step wrong at the very edge of the rocks, and was immediately up to my ankle in mud. Laurie got stuck the same way for a while; I thought he was going to lose a boot.

On the far side of the tracks, in the dead end of the bay, another large, mixed flock of ducks swam in the river mouth, while dowitchers searched through the mud by the old, rotten fence. Looking closely at our photos, I noticed that most of the pintails sit upright, head high. Almost all the teals in the photos are lying flat, often with their faces in the water.

We usually see gulls and eagles here; only one eagle this time.

Calm before sunset. 

Laurie waiting for me. I was taking photos of coconuts.

Coconuts, again? Tomorrow, tomorrow.

A Skywatch post.

Mirror images

While I was trying to get a photo of ducks and coots underwater, Laurie saw a distant flock of "peeps", and went to investigate.

An archipelago of tiny yellow flowers, in a Reifel Island pond a couple of inches deep, and long-billed dowitchers.

Three, with two reflections.

Some of the photos he brought back remind me of Escher's symmetrical drawings, the ones with birds or fish or lizards, black ones interwoven with white. (Except that these aren't quite as rigidly arranged.) I'd love to have them printed on a T-shirt, or maybe a pair of mugs.

The bill of the long-billed dowitcher is straight, and twice the length of the head. The one near the centre of this photo shows this clearly.