[birding] Pictures from Shorebird festival

[Cheryl Whelchel]

The annual Shorebird Festival in Charleston was great fun.  The festival had 2 wonderful speakers, and excellent field trip leaders.  This provided an excellent weekend of birding on the truly wonderful South coast.  Keep this festival in mind for next year, it was a great experience.

I almost went away disappointed though.  As it seemed nearly everyone had seen the Baird's Sandpipers at Bastendorf Beach except myself.  On Sunday after all of the field trips, I made a desperate last trip to Bastendorf.  After checking the Least in the puddle for several disappointing minutes I had almost given up, when I saw a small flock out near the tide line.  Through my scope, I could see that some were noticebly larger.  I rushed down to the waters edge and was finally rewarded with my lifer Baird's Sandpiper.  I always thought that this would be a difficult bird to pick out or differentiate, but it was so clearly different and the long primaries and scalyness of the feathers were instantly apparent.  What a wonderful bird!

I have posted some pictures of various birds from the weekend at the following link.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vgswallow16/<http://www.flickr.com/photos/vgswallow16/>

Cheryl Whelchel
Tangent
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