February 2, 2014

Bird traces
Bird traces

We went to the beach twice today, once just to look and once to walk and look.  There seemed to be more birds than ever, including a huge flock of sandpipers that were nestling into a long expanse of pebbles. Their shape and coloring were such that they almost seemed to be pebbles themselves.

The footprints are small — and delicate.  A single wave would probably erase them.  Their distribution is dense enough to imply a large group, possibly shuffling themselves around.  Jockeying for position?  Settling in?  These must be sandpiper prints; they are too small to belong to the gulls.  They seem embossed rather than embedded.  How?

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