Dunlin, Least & Western Sandpipers
Can ya’ll ID these 3 Texas winter shorebirds: 1/5/25, Galveston East Beach. Started the shorebird scoresheet for 2025 with 12 species.

Can ya’ll ID these 3 Texas winter shorebirds: 1/5/25, Galveston East Beach. Started the shorebird scoresheet for 2025 with 12 species.

Spent 3.5 hours at Cedar Point on Lake Buchanan this morning. 40 species total including 5 Tri-colored herons and a Bushtit. 10 species of shorebirds including 3 new ones for the fall shorebird season: Marbled Godwit, Black-bellied Plover and Greater Yellowlegs. Conditions look pretty good there for shorebirds. I had 5 flocks of peeps fly…
Here’s a comparison of Semipalmated with a Least. So I think we can see actual black legs here on this sandpiper. It’s a short-winged bird; wings are just atop tail. Bill is short and pretty straight. Overall coloration is fairly pale, not brown. Baird’s and Least are brown-hued birds. Both also have a chest coloration…
Good news/bad news from my first trip to Hornsby during fall migration. Good: Fall migration is here!!! Good: lots of floating mud habitat at Hornsby. Good: Lots of shorebirds — 1000 plus I estimated. Good: 9 species of shorebird. Good: temp is manageable from 6:30-10:00am or so. Good: lots of Stilt and whistle duck chicks….
Another great trip to High Island with Eric and others!!! Witnessing a fallout happen was amazing!!!
Made a quick trip to check conditions at cedar point on lake buchanan this morning. Only had 2 killdeer and 4 very distant shorebirds. But the good news is conditions look pretty good for shorebirds later in the fall migration — we have shore!!! (meaning sand next to water). Had about 65 Great Egrets, a…
Eric, Lance and I led the Shorebird Class to Corpus over the last weekend. I had a great time with highlights for me being: “That’s him!!!” (IDing the long-staying Glaucous Gull in mid-air at 65 mph on the JFK causeway), Identifying grass-pipers at the sod farms with the class at about ½ mile distant (definitely…