I ended up setting my little video camera up near the seaweed line and moved off to see if I could get some video of shorebirds coming to feed in front of it. The sun was shining and there was minimal wind, so I mostly just laid back and kept a relaxed eye on the activities around me.

Different shorebirds have different feeding habits including choices about sand and/or mud vs. rocks, the water’s edge vs further up the beach, and dining close with neighbors vs more spread out individuals. I’ve noticed that Least Sandpipers seem to prefer feeding up higher in the beach in fine gravel or sand without packing too densely – this especially seems to be the case when there are large flocks of other species feeding on the same beach. Sometimes the Least Sandpipers are joined be a couple of Western Sandpipers, but they usually seem to hang together more down near the water’s edge.

As long as I did not shift around too much while I was there relaxing, the Least Sandpipers seemed to be fairly comfortable with my presence. In the course of their seemingly haphazard sprints from one spot to the next, they would end up coming within a few feet of me. It was interesting to watch them probe the sand with their bills, but I couldn’t tell how often they were successful in finding something.

From time to time most of the shorebirds from an area of the beach would all take off together, flying out over the water before circling back to the beach – sometimes the same section they had just vacated and other times another section. One of the more common causes appeared to be ravens taking flight and startling them, but a fair number of times I couldn’t discern any apparent reason for them to flush. Many of the times when this occurred, the Least Sandpipers up higher on the beach didn’t flush with the crowd.

Over the 30 or more minutes I was in the same spot, I noticed the Least Sandpipers foraging up on the beach frequently did not flush with the other birds down a little further (at this time the upper part and the water’s edge were still only separated by a 3 or 4 meters). For quite a while I didn’t think much about it, but at some point it occurred to me that there were a lot of shorebirds hanging out on the beach and they seemed like they might make pretty good meals for a hungry raptor. That realization was immediately followed by the thought that the Least Sandpipers near me were seeming kind of unconcerned about potential threats when they were not flushing with the rest of the birds nearest them.

Just moments after those thoughts went through my mind, I was startled by the sound of air rushing over wings set to make a sharp change of direction. I jumped a little from the sound as my eyes had shifted, tracking the fast movement and accompanying sound of a Merlin in its dive to grab a sandpiper off the sand only a meter or two away. In the fraction of a second it took me to process what had happened, the Merlin was winging its way to the south carrying its prey with a Raven in hot pursuit both leaving a wake of shorebirds flushing one more time from the beach where they were feeding. I figured the raven was probably giving chase in hopes of stealing a meal, but I don’t think it made up any ground and it gave up after a time, turning off back toward the beach while the Merlin continued south across the water toward Morne Island.

I hadn’t been thinking about it at the time, but this was not the first time I saw a Least Sandpiper taken by a Merlin along this stretch of beach. Though the circumstances of the prior time were a little different.

Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla) observed at Totem Park.

Connor, Rowan and I took a walk around the park this evening not too long after high tide. Connor and Rowan had taken the path through the woods to skip ahead of me while I completed the circuit aound the shoreline from the river mouth to the Visitor’s Center.

I was walking past the first opening to the trail (as you come from the Visitor’s Center), perhaps a little lost in thought and paying more attention to what Connor and Rowan were doing down the beach than to what was in front of me. I’m not sure why I had more or less decided there wouldn’t be much else to see, though it seems that is what had happened. The sudden movement on the beach in front of me jerked my attention back to where I was, and I saw a 5 Least Sandpipers that had been moved to action by my approach.

The birds had all been in the seaweed piled up at the high tide line, but two of them had flown a dozen feet or so down from there. Initially I paid more attention to the birds still in the seaweed, and while I did, the other two settled down and stopped moving. It’s always interesting to me how easily a shorebird, especially one as small as a Least Sandpiper, can seem to disappear just by standing still. In this case, I brought my attention back toward locating the two that were down on the fine gravel and sparsely strewn seaweed.

I took a couple of steps toward where I knew they were before I was able to spot them. Just as I did, they flushed and before they could get more than a couple of inches off the ground, one of them was plucked out of the air by a diving raptor. I was close enough to hear clearly the sharp whoosh of air over feathers, as the small raptor grabbed for the sandpiper and abruptly changed course to avoid crashing into the beach. It was all so sudden and close that it startled me a bit; it felt almost like my heart skipped a beat. I watched as the bird quickly flew down the shoreline toward the Visitor’s Center where I lost sight of it after it looped behind some trees. I did not see the bird well, but based on the size and shape, I’m reasonably confident it was a Merlin. (Falcon-like wings, but seeming too small for a Peregrine, and too dark and large for a Kestrel.)

I suspect the Merlin had been waiting in the trees and then took advantage of the distraction I created and went after the sandpipers. In hindsight, the two may have been flushing because of the predator rather than me, but if so, they were a bit too slow (or one of them was, anyway).

As I continued my walk down the beach, I came upon two additional Least Sandpipers that seemed very disinclined to move. It’s been my experience in the past that Least Sandpipers will allow for a fairly close approach with some patience, but I basically walked right up to these, not really noticing them until they took a few steps. When I realized they were not going to move unless I really forced the issue, I decided to use the opportunity to take some pictures.

I was able to get within about 6 feet of the bird pictured here, and that was with only minimal effort at being slow/stealthy on my part. Although it was 20 or 30 yards down the shoreline, I suspect the two birds were well aware of what had happened only a few minutes earlier and were being extra wary about revealing their presence to any would-be predators. As I was taking pictures of the sandpiper it was frequently tilt its head up to look towards the trees (as shown in the photo below).

Least Sandpiper (Calidris minutilla) observed at Totem Park.

Yesterday I saw 3 Northern Pintails, 6 smaller dabblers (I thought Green-winged Teal at the time, though they may have been Northern Shovelers), at least 4 Caspian Terns (including a hatch-year bird), many Thayer’s Gulls, Mew Gulls, a handful of Herring Gulls, Glaucous-winged Gulls, and a couple of Black-legged Kittiwakes. 5 or so White-winged Scoters did a fly by and there were at least 40 phalaropes out on Crescent Bay in two or three flocks that I saw. Shorebirds included Least Sandpipers, Black Turnstones, a Ruddy Turnstone, and what I intially thought might be a Wandering Tattler, but now wonder if it might have been a Spotted Sandpiper.

Last night I heard the terns flying over the neighborhood.

Today there were 8 Northern Shovelers, 10 or so Black Turnstones, a Ruddy Turnstone, at least 5 Least Sandpipers, a Western Sandpiper, Spotted Sandpiper, many gulls; I noted Mew, Herring, Glaucous-winged, and Thayer’s. Ravens and Bald Eagles, and a couple of warblers in the alders along the beach. The warblers were very yellow and the one I got a good look at had a hint of streaking on the breast, so I’m thinking Yellow Warblers.