Here come the shorebirds!

Least and western sandpipers

Today, I visited the National Wildlife Refuge and Biological Study area off of the Bayshore bike path between Imperial Beach and Coronado, California. It was the first time I've been there to actually look at the birds, though I have ridden my bike down there several times in the past.

I saw a lot of cute shorebirds, but first started with some wigeons, gadwalls, and pintails (I didn't get any photos of the gadwalls):

Pintails

Wigeons

Then, I saw a whole lot of willets. Here's a couple with some wigeons:



There were gobs of birds I couldn't identify because they were so far away:



I like the semipalmated plovers, they look like 2 to 3 week old killdeer chicks. Here they are with a few western sandpipers:



I thought I had scared this big flock of western sandpipers off because I stepped into the boundary of the refuge a few feet (which is a no-no). But, then, I saw a falcon fly by, so I knew they weren't nervous wasn't because of me:



I couldn't get a photo of the falcon, I was concentrating on getting a correct identification. In that photo above, there are also some brants (a type of goose). Here is a close-up of a few:



I am going to post more photos on my Gather page, you can access it here: Darlene's Gather "Other Photos" Page I will also be posting them on We Love Birds and Flickr, too.

I did see some killdeer and some other plovers, but they were too far away to get a good photo of. The killdeer were staying far away from the area the falcon (and a feral cat) were at. In fact, one group of killdeers saw the falcon five minutes before I did and were probably long gone or hidden by the time it flew over to that area.