Sanderlings 2/6/25
I’ve been wondering where my cute little feathered friends from the far North have been, and now I know. I was at Ft Funston a little over a week ago looking for dolphins and Gray Whales (I did indeed find the Bottlenose Dolphins and posted them earlier). As I was waiting, I noticed a bunch of little white butts sticking up in the air down on the beach (photo7). I thought, “I know those butts!”, and pointed my camera toward them and confirmed they were my Sanderling buddies. I decided to leave my position high on the cliff on the observation deck to go down to the beach. I didn’t undertake that task lightly, as the winds were blowing 40+ MPH and I could see “rivers of sand” blowing along the beach. But it was the first time I’d seen them this migration season, and wanted to get some closeups.
These guys travel crazy far, crazy fast. 2 years ago I photographed a few with tags on them and was able to get hold of the researcher who tagged one of them. He had tagged it more than 650 miles away in Canada, less than 14 days earlier. And that was after it had traveled a long distance already, as these guys breed in the Arctic Tundra.
The photography was pretty challenging with the wind, the sand blasting and periodic rain. The wind was blowing my big lens all over the place, and I was struggling just to stay standing so kneeled for a lot of the shots. But it didn’t seem to bother the Sanderlings at all. They happily continued poking around in the sand for sand crabs. I also found some Whimbrel on the beach, which is another species I normally would see on the Pacifica beaches by now and haven’t. I’ll post some of those later.
