True Bird Tales: Giff Beaton

My friend Bruce Hallett and I had spent all day in the Crane Creek woods, trying to get better photos of a wonderful variety of neotropic migrants for my warbler web page. It was a long but fun day, tiring lugging all that equipment around, and challenging trying to get different plumages of whatever we could glean from among the gleaners.

As we trudged out to our car reliving some of the successes and misses of the day in the fading light, Bruce spotted a small cluster of shorebirds on the Lake Erie shoreline. We decided to cruise over for a better look, and were delighted to find a flock of Eastern (hudsonia) Dunlin.

All weariness was forgotten as we planned our crawl along the beach of broken shells to get the best angle in the lovely late afternoon light. They continued to feed and preen unconcernedly as we slowly crawled up toward them on our arms and legs like a couple of giddy little schoolboys playing buffalo scout. Actually, we WERE kind of giddy as they just stayed there as we got closer and closer!

They let us approach very close indeed, and we were rewarded with a couple hundred images of every stage of plumage and any pose you could ask for. They continued to feed and rest as we slowly backed away with our fill of great images, and as we marveled at their exquisite plumage and how far they had yet to go… maybe starting that very evening. The perfect end to another great day of birding!

…::…

Giff Beaton has been birding for 35 years, and especially enjoys status and distribution of warblers, along with trying to photograph them. He has written Birding Georgia, Birds of Kennesaw Mountain, and Dragonflies and Damselflies of Georgia and the Southeast, and lives about 5 miles from Kennesaw Mountain, his favorite birding spot.