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| Purple Sandpiper |
This morning I drove out to Jetty Park in Brevard Co. hoping to find a Purple Sandpiper that was seen there recently. I arrived a around 8:30, and for about a half-hour I looked in vain for the sandpiper. But then I met another birder there who had just seen a Common Eider. So I diverted my attention for a while looking for that duck, since it would be lifer. I looked and looked but could not find it. But then another birder friend came to my rescue. She had a scope and located it for me. In my binoculars it looked simply like a brown rock, but in the scope it was the Common Eider. That's my second lifer of 2014! After enjoying the Eider for a while, I returned to looking for the Purple Sandpiper. I scoured the rocky jetty where it had been seen, but I it either wasn't there or was hidden from view. And then a little after 10 am I saw it flying north across the river toward the jetty where others had seen it before I couldn't tell where it had landed, but I walked up and down the pier until it finally showed itself.
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| Purple Sandpiper |
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| Purple Sandpiper |
I found almost all of the other birds I was hoping to find here: Black Scoter, Great Black-backed Gull, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Sandwich Tern, Royal Tern, Willet, Sanderling, and most of the other birds you'd expect to find here. I missed out on a few, though. I didn't see a Reddish Egret, which I've seen here before, and oddly enough, no Ruddy Turnstone. Go figure.
Beautiful photographs!
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