Hi,

I spent this morning from dawn till about 8 am on the boardwalk at the north
end of Hoover Res.  Nothing super exciting, but it was nice to get out and
see some shorebirds.  The water was still pretty high, so there wasn't quite
as much muddy shoreline as there may be in the coming weeks.  Best thing
about the morning was that there was good mud just below the end of the
boardwalk, and lots of the sandpipers didn't seem to mind my proximity.  So
I got some REALLY good studies and comparisons of several species.  Some
were almost too close even for binoculars!  For example, I got to really
study the back and wing feather patterns of a juvenile "prairie"
Short-billed Dowitcher.  I've never seen one that close-up before.  There
were tons of Yellowlegs, and by my best judgment (almost all were pretty
dang close) they were all Lessers.  Their calls all sounded the same (flat,
mostly one or two note calls), none looked noticeably larger, none seemed to
have upturned bills.  I almost convinced myself that one Yellowlegs had too
much barring on the flanks to be a Lesser, but then he walked up next to
another Lesser and was the EXACT same size.  And I realized the barring was
just remnants of the breeding plumage.  Here's my list:

~30 Lesser Yellowlegs (3 or 4 were intermediate in molt stage between adult
breeding and winter plumage)
~20 Semipalmated Sandpipers
~10 Least Sandpipers
1 Pectoral Sandpiper
4 Solitary Sandpipers
1 Spotted Sandpiper
1 Short-billed Dowitcher
~15 Killdeer
2 Semipalmated Plovers
1 Green Heron
4 Great Egrets
15 Great-blue Herons
2 Belted Kingfishers
2 Osprey
~12 Ring-billed Gulls
4 Caspian Terns
Lots of Cormorants, Mallards, and tons of Canada Geese

Have a good Labor Day Weekend!

Nate Nye
Hilliard, OH

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