Day 15.316: Birds at the beach

Our bird sightings from Sunday.

A gull using the same fly-up-and-drop-on-the-hard-sand technique for crabs that they usually use for the surf clams.

Some American black ducks - in the edge of the waves (not a very good photo but interesting behavior), in flight showing their wing patches and swimming in the shallow water.

Most excitingly, we saw these slender divers. We (correctly) thought they were too small to be common loons but (also correctly) thought they must be loons. It turns out they are red-throated loons - winter visitors from the even more frozen north.

This bird has the interesting distinction of being the first bird in Peterson's Birds of Eastern and Central North America. The up-turned bill is distinctive.