Photos of the Day- Solitary Sandpiper

The last three Sunday's while I have been at work there have been reports of fairly rare birds. So after work (and last week after the Pats game) I have been dragging Laurie to chase birds.

 Two weeks ago there were reports of Buff Breasted Sandpiper in turf fields in Richmond, RI. It wasn't where it was reported. Luckily, another birder was on the bird and he showed it to me. Last week, I got to pay it forward. When I arrived at another turf field in South Kingston there wasn't anyone there. Pretty quickly I found my target, American Golden Plover. Another car pulled up and I got to show a birder the plovers in my scope. Five minutes later a Coopers Hawk scared the plovers to the other side of the field. I was pumped to get both of those species. They were too far away even for proof pictures. I got good views in the scope of both, especially the Golden Plovers. 

This week lightning struck a third time. A report came in on Facebook about 12:30 that a Solitary Sandpiper was at Walker Farm in Barrington. I had to work until 3 pm but since Barrington is only 20 minutes away I knew I could see it without missing much of the 4:25 pm Pats game.

We found it pretty quickly and took a ton of pictures. I sat down with another lady on some grass. It was feeding in mud puddles near compost heaps. While we were sitting, it kept getting closer while it fed. It probably got to withing 20 feet. We watched it and photographed it for 30 minutes. If I knew the Patriots would get beat so badly, I'd have stayed and photographed it another hour!