Sandpipers....

We drove over to the Henderson Slough area to see what birds might still be around. We found Sandpipers mostly! This was the closest I have gotten and better shots then usual. We saw at least 2 kinds, maybe 3. I'm assuming what we mainly saw are Yellowlegs, but whether we saw both Greater and Lesser, I haven't figured out.
There appeared to be two different sizes of birds.

Most were like this with the spotty looking feathers.

Mixed in with them were ones that had more bird like feathers (if that makes sense). A better photo of those further down.

I think this is one of the smaller looking ones.

Big and little

This shows the two types of feathers. I would just be guessing to try to figure out the one on the left. I have not seen a lot of sandpipers.

Another shot of the two kinds. When the one in front looks right at you it has a stripe up the middle of it's head.

Some seemed to be lighter gray than others.....non-breeding vs. breeding? The light gray ones seemed the biggest here.

Here is a pair we saw at a different location and you can see that one is a lot bigger than the other.

This one has his mouth open for several shots :-) They were all noisy! If I knew bird calls, I would surely know what we saw.

I got a couple of accidental flight shots. I like how they land.....with the wings up and then bring them down to their sides. This one is taking off.

Another one winging away, but it shows the fanned out tail.

Very interesting day! I really enjoyed seeing all of these. There was one body of water that seemed to have a lot of them mixed with some ducks, but it was on the far side of a plowed field and I didn't get good shots. I figured if I walked across the field they would all fly away.

We also saw a few ducks and other things, so maybe more from this trip tomorrow.