Last of the Northbounds

[2 of about 100 Semipalmated Sandpipers feeding at Cook's Beach, sunset tonight. Click to enlarge photos.]

When not ruminating on how it would feel if oil was watching up on my beach (having spent the weekend banding birds with an ornithologist guest and new friend up from Alabama), the evening was completely pleasant - bug free thanks to the winds of the high pressure system now over the county, clear, and with shorebirds feeding on the bay. 100 Semipalmated Sandpipers, 10 Ruddy Turnstones, 1 Black-bellied Plover, and 1 Greater Yellowlegs populated Cook's Beach on the Delaware Bay as the tide fell - the last, or some of them, of the northbounds.

[The local Seaside Sparrows serenaded from the roadside along Cook's Beach Road tonight.]