Can You Call This Luck?

Since I was headed to the Prince Edward County area this past weekend, and since the weather was absolutely lovely, I left early on Friday and made a stop at Presqu'ile Provincial Park. The Marsh Boardwalk trail was lovely, if a bit quiet from a bird perspective (unless you count all the Mallards out on the open water). It was the Owen Point trail, though, that was my real objective.

Now, I'm no expert at shorebirds... no, that doesn't quite give the full measure of things, say rather that my experience to date with shorebirds is limited to Killdeer. So I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to go out to the lakeshore during fall migration and dive in headfirst, so to speak. I think fall shorebirds are actually worse than fall warblers. Still, I took a stab at it.



This one might be a juvenile Black-bellied Plover? Mostly due to that stout, stubby little beak, in combination with the dark legs and the overall coloration.





Pectoral Sandpipers, I think? With Semipalmated Plovers running across the back of the second shot, those ones I know at least. The Pectorals have the clean line separating the dark neck from the white belly, are bigger than the Semipalmated, have yellowish legs, and the faintly downturned bill. Maybe.



I think these are all Sanderlings. The ones to the left are juveniles, and the darker one to the right is a male that hasn't quite lost his breeding plumage yet? Still a stubby, dark beak, but it looks longer than the Black-bellied Plover's. The male seemed to have redder overtones and a straighter, shorter beak than the Pectoral, even though it does have that clean line across the chest.



Another Semipalmated Plover on the left, with the full breast-band, and another possible-Sanderling on the right. Not too much difference in size between the two.





So, the one in the back with the long, downcurved bill might be a Stilt Sandpiper?  Though it looks bigger than the other bird, which might be another Sanderling, so I'm not sure... those two are supposed to be similar sizes. (CORRECTION: actually a Dunlin, pretty sure.)



These guys were really tiny, I think they're Semipalmated Sandpipers (not to be confused with the Plovers of earlier). Dark legs means they're not Least, anyway.



...yeah.  Yeah, I don't even know, they all started to look the same to me by this point. I think I need a better shorebird ID book, and also to practice a lot more.

On my way back to the car, I finally got my Blue-headed Vireo, in a mixed flock of mostly Chickadees and Yellow-rumped Warblers. I also saw something that looked like... well, I know what I think it was, but I also know that that particular bird really shouldn't have been there. So I've put out a plea for a second opinion, and will wait to speak further on that one until I've had a sanity check.