It’s been a warm October so far and some of our summer birds apparently are enjoying themselves too much to think about migrating. For example, we saw this Greater Yellowlegs Sandpiper yesterday morning.
You don’t get a chance to see all of these birds’ long legs and feet when they’re fishing. However, their namesakes become startlingly obvious when the birds look for dessert on the intertidal mudflats.
Sometimes they fish in water up to their chests and look like dabbling ducks.
By the way, the thin, yellow-streaming legs attached to Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs Sandpipers earned them the most disgusting collective name in bird terminology: — a group is called an “Incontinence of Yellowlegs.” (Brooklin, Maine)