[TN-Bird] Ensley Turn Over / New Birds

August 19, 2005
Ensley Bottoms
Shelby Co. TN
 
Lunch at the pits paid off today, the other trips this week were the same  
ol' same ol', but today there were new comers. The first was a very nervous and 
 
flighty Long-billed Dowitcher followed by a trio of Stilt Sandpipers (2 adult 
 molting and a dapper immature).
 
In another pit was a sharply dressed immature Ruddy Turnstone, new for the  
season. This bird was turning over clods of mud and finding with much  
regularity, large beetles which it proceeded to pummeled into submission and  
then 
seem to get to the interior meat of the matter and discarding the  exoskeleton. 
I've never seen one feed this way before but as I've said many  times before 
"adaptability and variability go hand in hand in shorebirds."
 
Just before my hour was up, I saw a distant, ghost like figure and found an  
immature female Wilson's Phalarope plodding over the flat snapping at the 
flying  insects it stirred up. Tomorrow?

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