Bird-a-thon Birds!

A collection of our Bird-a-thon photos.  Here's a Piping Plover.  We saw a million of them during Bird-a-thon!

My favorite shorebird; an American Oystercatcher!

A gorgeous Common Tern.

A Tree Sparrow at Sandy Neck in Sandwich.

A Least Tern at Sandy Neck beach.

Birdathon Oystercatchers, Roseate Terns, Brants,and more!

The best surprise of the day was definately this American Oystercatcher. Pete would have loved to see this!


Criss-crossed terns!


Not the best photo for an ID, but this Roseate Tern image was the best quality of the few I managed to take during Birdathon, The swirling fog is simply impossible to deal with.


A better ID pic of the Roseate Tern, although very fuzzy.


Brants are a type of winter geese around here. They are very cute and shy.

IT ISN'T TOO LATE TO DONATE!

American Oystercatchers sharing our vacation beach!

A perfect vacation spot is one where you see a family of oystercatchers feeding on the beach in front of your rental, which is exactly what happened at our two week vacation in the Tahanto section of Pocasset!


I love oystercatchers! They are very near the top of my list of favorite birds. I love the gorgeous and brilliant colors, but also love the family bonds formed by this species.


Unlike last year, none of the local birds were banded, We did see banded birds at South Beach, however.


This juvenile is somewhat older than the ones we saw in Chatham last year, but they are still learning how to find their own food and still are dependant on their parents care.


Evidently, it requires a lot of digging to find enough oysters to make a meal these days!

Unfortunately, the thousands of pictures we took during the past few weeks are going to take a long time to retrieve from my daughter's laptop. The Homegroup feature of windows 7 stinks out loud. It takes forever and the quality is badly degraded. Now my daughter's laptop is with her at school, and I don't know how long it will be before I get all my photos transferred. But, what the hell! It was a great vacation, we managed a ton of birding adventures, and we all added more than a few lifelisters during the trip! Eventually I'll have something to share. Wait till you hear about the big outing we shared with all the birders who blog, tweet, and chirp! That was a big adventure!