Sanderlings...

...definitely make good photo subjects when you're bored! They are usually quite tame (especially the juveniles) and if you sit still they can approach to within arm's reach. This was the case when I headed over to Whitefish Point back on August 31 with my mom during my short week at home before school started. I was hoping for a decent birding/photography day and to see my old friend Scott Schuette who is once again the waterbird counter - see his blog at wpbo.org! (link in the sidebar as well). It turned out that he was on his day off and so wasn't around, but it was a pretty good day nonetheless. In terms of waterbirds the day was pretty crappy, with only a few loons, grebes and mergansers in that department. Early in the morning there was a flock of ~90 shorebirds on the point, including Piping Plover, Baird's Sandpiper and Ruddy Turnstone along with a few more common species. Since the lighting was terrible and there wasn't anything else around, we decided to walk around the woods where we had a decent diversity of songbirds including about 30 Blackpoll Warblers!

Once the light got a bit better we headed back out to the tip but it turned out a Merlin had come and scared off all the shorebirds (except for the Sanderlings). Since there wasn't a whole lot else to do, I took the opportunity to get a few shots of these cool little birds. They're down at the end!

As the point wasn't too rocking, we left and spent a while looking (unsuccessfully, as usual) for Spruce Grouse. Since we still had quite a bit of time we explored the area just south of the Tahquamenon Rivermouth, which turned out to be a good idea other than the swarms of mosquitos which were still present. We stumbled into a nice little mixed flock which had about 10 species of warblers along with Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Winter Wren, Golden-crowned Kinglets and a few Red-eyed Vireos. We also managed to find Lone Pine Rd, usually a good shorebird spot but the water was much too high so there was nothing there. Our warbler tally for the day ended up at 16 species, not too shabby for a short morning of birding!

 Sanderlings, WPBO - note most of these are uncropped!

and the ones that are have minimal cropping

I was so disappointed that the wingtip got cut off in this one...I think it still works though

One last closeup (not cropped!)