Shorebirds on Galveston Island

Hello! Today was a beautiful day. It was sunny, cool, and breezy so Tink and I decided to do a little bird watching on Galveston Island at the Apffle Park Beach. There was an abundance of birds today, especially Ring-billed and Laughing Gulls, and a wide variety too. The main reason I wanted to go to Galveston Island was to look for my favorite bird, the Red-breasted Merganser (which we saw), and also see what kind of shorebirds can be found here in winter. So this is what we saw:

Black-bellied Plover - Pluvialis squatarola , this was the only one I saw today.

Piping Plover - Charadrius melodus , there was unexpectedly a few of these! We counted 24 of this endangered specie. Interestingly two of them were banded with different bands as seen below.

This one has a blue band, which I didn't notice until I was zooming in to look at the picture on my camera.

Here is the second one with one orange and one red band on the lower leg and a green clip band on the upper part of the same leg ( the green leg is barely visible). I wonder where these two were banded?

Here are some more of the Piping Plovers with two Dunlins. A lot of the shorebirds were hiding behind debris today because of the strong cold winds; the sun was very warm otherwise. I hope they were comfortable.

Snowy Plover - Charadrius alexandrinus , we saw 14 of these today. This was the first time I have seen a Snowy Plover, and now I have seen all four of the small North American plover species.

Black-necked Stilt - Himantopus mexicanus & Greater Yellowlegs - Tringa melanoleuca

This was the only Black-necked Stilt we saw today which was with three Greater Yellowlegs. They seemed to be finding lots of goodies to eat in the tide pools.

Long-billed Curlew - Numenius americanus , there were two of these sleeping in a shallow area. Luckily a Laughing Gull flying by called and woke this one up for proper view and a picture.

Marbled Godwit - Limosa fedoa , there were four of these in the same estuary as the Stilt and Yellowlegs but these seemed to prefer the deeper spots.

Ruddy Turnstone - Arenaria interpres , blending in very well with the exposed oyster bed.

Sanderling - Calidris alba , taking an afternoon nap.

Dunlin - Calidris alpina , we saw about 21 of these. Unlike the other small shorebirds these were all very active in feeding; constantly moving and plunging their beaks deep into the sand.

Least Sandpiper - Calidris minutilla , this was the most common shorebird we saw today. We counted 63 of them. A lot of them were hidden among the exposed oyster beds. They were extremely hard to see, practically invisible, until you got close and they would scurry a little and then blend right back into the surrounding. It was amazing.

This is what I mean about being extremely hard to see! How many can you find?

There was also a few Willet - Catoptrophorus semipalmatus, but for some strange reason I didn't photograph any of them! They are common throughout the year on Galveston Island.

... and to end this post here is a Roseate Spoonbill - Ajaia ajaja , it was just a few feet from the road in the salt marsh.

Thanks for reading! :)