Day 14.039: On Surfside beach (and thereabouts) [corrected]

When we arrived on Pine Point beach on Saturday morning, the sea looked dead calm. I wasn't optimistic about identifying the distant ducks, but they turned out to be black scoters.

We were surprised to see a hopeful surfer (both due to the cold and lack of waves):

Even more surprised when it turned out that they were having some luck:

We watched this gull wrestle with this periwinkle for some time - repeatedly dropping it like they do with the mussels and clams - with rather less success as far as we saw.

Due to the time of year, these tiny "peeps" must be - surprisingly - western sandpipers as they are the only ones that winter here.  [It now appears that these must be sanderlings as the western sandpipers do not make it north to Maine although they do winter on the Atlantic coast further south. They were very much doing the sanderling behavior of running back and forth as if to try to stay exactly at the leading edge of each wave as it came and went.]

The other thing that surprised us were gulls sitting on the beach - although these first two seemed a bit self-conscious about it when I took a photo.

We saw quite a lot of other gulls doing the same - not sure why. On another day, they were all standing facing away from the sea. I daresay they have their reasons.