Sunday the 21st I decided to head out to Iona Beach to look for an Arctic Tern that had been spotted there the day before. Arctic Terns aren't that common around these parts.

On my way out of my condo, I stopped in the courtyard to watch some Violet-green Swallows zooming through the air, and to check on the new ducklings, who were paddling around the pond.

Once I was at Iona, I started out the south jetty, which I've been out on numerous times. After going about a half a kilometer, I heard some screeching and looked up to see three Caspian Terns chasing a Bald Eagle southward. A few minutes after, the terns went back northward, disappearing after passing over the north jetty. I got curious about where they had gone, and decided to abort the south jetty mission and launch a north jetty one. I'd never been past the wood-chipping plant on the north jetty, and supposedly there's quite a bit of jetty out there past it.

Near the chipping plant, I stopped to take a few photos of a white butterfly that came to rest in front of me. It was a Mustard White. They're quite common.

The Arctic Tern, a much smaller bird, had been seen in the company of Caspian Terns in this area. So while I watched the flock of Caspians, I had been keeping an eye out for smaller birds amongst them. After about a half an hour of this, seeing no smaller bird, I, ummm, terned my attention to other things on the jetty.

The only birds in my immediate area were a couple of Spotted Sandpipers. Here's one on a nearby log.

That log didn't seem like a great place to forage, but it did afford the bird a pretty good view of the area. Heck, I had just been standing on a log for a while, myself, because it was a good platform and afforded me a good view. Why shouldn't the Spotty do the same?

One of the logs near the one I had stood on had been part of a log boom at some point, and it still had a spike or something in it with a rope tied on. The combination of textures interested me.

I walked a ways back east on the jetty, on the north side, until I realized that to continue I would have to cross into the wood-chipping plant. I decided against that, as the people working there don't like parkgoers in amongst their heavy machinery and wood chips. So I retraced my steps west.

When I got to where I had been before, a Spotted Sandpiper was up on a log. I think that this is the same bird that I saw before, but I can't be certain.

I was pretty tired by this point, and I set off towards my car. Rather than walk on the shifting sands of the jetty, I walked out onto the mudflats, which were pretty solid. The tide wasn't very far out, though, so I was fairly near the edge of the water. At one point, I saw three little shorebirds at the edge. I watched them and took photos for a while.

I recognized the genus of these birds, Calidris, immediately. Their shape is distinctive. Unfortunately, there are a number of little Calidrines that are often hard to tell apart. My birds seemed a little larger than the smallest Calidrines, which birders collectively call peeps, but I wasn't 100% sure of that size estimate; so it was possible that these were peeps.

Two of the birds were rufous (red-brown).

And the third was more chocolate-brown and grey.

Well, I couldn't figure out what those birds were, either in the field or once I was back in my car with my guide book. I thought that I had two different species, and that confused me.

I sent my photos to my friend Ilya, though, and he set me straight. All three of these birds were Sanderlings. Sanderlings are one of the few Calidris sandpipers where the males and females look different. I had one female and two males. They were in their breeding plumage. I had only seen Sanderlings in nonbreeding plumage before, which (for both sexes) is white with a pale grey back and wings (or darker grey and black on the juveniles).

It was interesting to have encountered a bird that I thought I knew, looking totally different than my conception of them. I'm always learning something, I guess.

As I walked along, I went by a Northwestern Crow who was making a rattly call rather than the stereotypical cawing. And he was digging in the mud while he did it. It seemed quite different than the crow behaviour that I normally observe, and I wondered (but never found out) what it was all about.

I wondered about how it got there; after all, coconuts are tropical, I was in a temperate zone, and coconuts aren't migratory. Maybe swallows had carried it there.

I pondered for a while, and then headed on, thinking about the airspeed velocity of unladen swallows. I guess it's pretty hard to get birds off my mind.

I jumped over a few little streams in the mud where the tide was still going out, heading straight across the flat towards the parking lot. The only notable bird I encountered on the way was a Killdeer who was cooling his toes in the water.