While I haven’t been out to see them myself, reports from Birdbrains indicate that the shorebirds are starting to arrive back in Florida for the winter. Yes, winter. It’s July! These birds are incredible. They get all spiffy-looking in their breeding colors in May, fly to the Arctic, have their babies, and arrive back in late July with those spiffy feathers well-worn from their long trip. Amazing, huh? We’re happy to welcome them back to the Sunshine State. Hopefully later this weekend I’ll have an opportunity to get back out to photograph some of them! :)

This Least Sandpiper was molting into his breeding colors when I photographed him back in April. He will have lost the pretty brown tones by now.

PS – If you had trouble playing the Squirt video in my last post, try again. I wish that the various browsers would standardize a way to stream video!! I’ve now tested it in IE, Firefox, and Safari.