2022-0211 A Day On The Beach
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Peregrine Falcon on the hunt
Peregrines regularly cruise the beach looking to pick off shorebirds, including sanderling. High tide can be exciting, because if the tide is high enough all shorebirds that feed in the nearby estero are forced out onto the beach. There can be thousands of shorebirds on the beach at high tide, most of them like Dunlin, Least and Western Sandpipers, and Snowy and Semipalmated Plovers.
Had you been on the beach at the previous low tide (or the subsequent one), the consequences of these interhabitat movements driven by the tidal cycle can be dramatic. Almost no birds at very low tides. Thousands at high.
The best hours for shorebird watching and photographing on Limantour are roughly 3 hrs before the high until 3 hours after it. And on Limantour, the best light for photography runs from dawn to 2 hours later, and 2 hours before sunset until it goes down. Plan your expeditions accordingly.
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