Flock of sandpipers, Point Reyes National Seashore

It's been an eventful couple of months since I last posted to my blog (including starting my exciting new job with the Environmental Sciences & Engineering program at Harvard!), and I'm feeling the need to start sharing my creative vision again. While I have had only very limited photographic productivity so far in 2012 (and really, it was just in the first few months of the year), I still have a back log of hundreds of images from California and our trip through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks waiting to be shared. In addition to sitting on some of my favorites from these trips, I've also spent some time over the past few months mining through old folders looking for images that were once overlooked -- like this one of a flock of shorebirds on Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore. I'm looking forward to getting out again for the fall shorebird migration, but until I have some new images from coastal Massachusetts, I hope you enjoy some travels through my archives.

More photos from Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore

Thank you!

A sincere and heartfelt thanks to my "flock" of supporters who took the time to vote for my image in the 2010 National Geographic Viewer's Choice contest. The vote was supposed to close on December 15 (although the voting page appears to still be live, so I'm not sure when exactly its officially done). In the three days from when I first found out about the vote until now, over 550 new votes were tallied for my image. That is so awesome, and I can't thank you all enough!

It's such an honor just to have been selected as one of the weekly choices from the contest submission period, and I still can't quite believe that I have an image on the NG site! I'm humbled and giddily excited! I'll be sure to post a link to the results once they announce the winners -- and if I happen to be among them, that would be incredible. But even in the likely event that I'm not, the quality of images in this contest is amazing and looking through the winners will surely be fun!

So again, thank you all so very, very much!


This shot is of the large flock of western sandpipers, sanderlings, and dunlin I saw cruising the shoreline at Limantour Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore. They seemed to really want to find a place to rest, but you know how shorebirds are -- when one bird gets antsy and takes off, they all go!

Incoming

A group of shorebirds lands while a second wave approaches the runway. This is just a portion of the large flock of western sandpipers, sanderlings, and dunlin that I saw along Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore this day.

View more photographs of sandpipers.

Sleeping sandpipers in Point Reyes National Seashore

For me, there is no greater photographic pleasure than spending a quiet morning with a group of shorebirds. My most recent trip to Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore was one of my best encounters ever. It included some snowy plovers, a few dozen semipalmated plovers, and the biggest flock of sandpipers I've ever personally seen. I had the opportunity to take some shots of the flock moving in amazing unison, and hopefully at least a few of them will turn out (check back again soon -- hopefully I'll have a chance to get through all of the images in the near future). For now though, I've decided to post one of a more relaxed variety.

Here's a look into a small part of the much larger flock -- a group of western sandpipers gathered around a dunlin. Something about this moment really caught my eye. Perhaps it was the pattern of the smaller birds gathered around the edges, or the fact that all of the westerns had their eyes closed while the dunlin kept watch. And I just love how with seven main birds resting in the frame, there are only seven spindly legs touching the ground.

Isolated

A lone western sandpiper preening amidst a large flock of sanderlings. This was a sizeable group of shorebirds along the beach at Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore, and while laying in the sand with them I was constantly looking for interesting compositions and captivating subjects to isolate from the crowd. My eye kept coming back to the brown plumage of this bird, since it stood out against the grayscale of the sanderlings -- and eventually it started to preen, which further set itself apart.