You are not really here to see shorebirds are you? C’mon, fess up. You want to see birders in Hawaiian shirts. Well, I’ll get to that.
I first heard about the Hawaiian Shirt Shorebird Safari back in June when I attended the Bloggers who Blog, Tweet and Chirp outing. I was chatting with Laura about birds, birding, our cats, and trips she has led; when she mentioned this crazy thing they do with the Brookline Bird Club. They all wear Hawaiian shirts and leis while scouring South Beach for shorebirds in migration. I instantly fell in love with the idea and resolved to go.
I drove up the day before and spent the night with Laura and Mark. We had to be at the meeting place at 8:30 am; the boat to South Beach left at 9. (We used Rip Ryder in Chatham $25.00.) As soon as we arrived, it was obvious this was not your usual birding trip.
While Laura checked on the boat, Mark put out the box of leis. I was wearing a cobalt blue shirt with hibiscus flowers and macaws on it. Pretty snazzy, huh. A multi-colored lei just added to the chaos. The trip across to the spit was uneventful. As we were wading to shore, a shouted “Whimbrel!” made us all look up. Nice. On shore, scope legs were quickly slid out and the real business of the day began.
There were Semi-palmated Plovers, Sanderlings, Short-billed Dowitchers, and a few Red Knots.
There were hundreds maybe even thousands of Terns including a few fly-by Roseates. There were Herring, Laughing and Ring-billed Gulls.
There was as a Ruddy Turnstone determined to dig a hole to China in search of sand worms.
Can you see it there in the bottom left?
We birded sitting,
and standing.
There were a lot of shorebirds, we ended up with 51 species. The Godwits put on quite the show.
Big aloha thank you to Laura
and Mark
Dude, Mass birders so rock. For more birds and less birders check out Picus Blog.
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