A very low morning tide opened up a huge swatch of tidal flats at Sandy Point State Reservation. The small mounds and dark sand in this region of the beach made for an interesting setting for the lone semipalmated sandpiper I encountered. In my trip preparations the night before, the eBird reports from the previous few days had sightings of flocks with 150+ semipalmated sandpipers and dunlin. Given the time of year, there was a great chance that they’d be showing some of their summer colors as well. While I had hoped that the low tide would keep the flocks foraging on the flats around the southern edge of the island, as it turned out, they happened to be further up the estuary while I was in the park (which I observed on a quick stop at the Bill Forward Bird Blind on my drive out). It’s hard to pass up a chance to spend time with a sandpiper in non-basic plumage, and this individual gave me a couple of fleeting opportunities as it traversed the flats.
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