Shorebirds
Shorebirds have always been one of my favorite bird photography species groups. I love their high pitched calls, their very specialized and often exaggerated anatomy, and the way they usually move in flocks—sometimes of a few birds, sometimes in the many thousands.
From the photography perspective, I like that if you just sit there for long enough, they’ll eventually accept you as part of the landscape and let you photograph them as long as you’re still and quiet.
Over the years I’ve gotten lots of photos of these three species—Long-billed Dowitchers, Greater Yellowlegs, and Least Sandpipers, but these photos from yesterday are some of the best photos of each species I’ve managed so far. Most of that has to do with finding a spot that has a nice background and water that doesn’t have too much stuff floating in it or distracting grasses and weeds. Light is also an issue because often they are in areas where the sun is obscured when it gets low enough for the light to be soft enough for photography. Yesterday all that came together very nicely in an after-work photography session.
