Shoreline Charm: Sanderlings

Sanderlings and a Herring Gull

I'm used to admiring shoreline birds for their bare-legged resilience, their aeronautics, their adaptations to hunting underwater. Then I encountered a flock of Sanderlings migrating through Halibut Point this month. Picturing them next to a sturdy Herring Gull introduced the matter of charm.

Sanderling

Being diminutive and scarce favors the appeal of a Sanderling, as do its fine proportions. In truth there are smaller, tern-like gulls that I find more charming than the ubiquitous Herring Gull.



Sanderlings tiptoe around the tideline with scarcely any disruption to good order. They nibble. They accomplish their community life with a minimum of jostling or recrimination.

 
Part of their charm derives from the slightness of their resistance to a vast environment. They manage to be successful anti-heroes in a demanding world.

Sanderlings specialize in gleaning  tiny morsels where the churning surf plays out its final energies. They harvest edible bits and pieces cast into the shallows.

In this swirling environment they coordinate their eyes for opportunity and safety.

 
Their movements in unison are choreographed more by temperament than by negotiation.

Sanderlings and Ruddy Turnstone

Sanderlings live a split-second existence at the interface of rock, water and air. They translate among these elements with quick switches of their walk-run-fly modes.

 
Sanderlings suddenly take to the air. The mystery and synchronicity of their departure contributes to their allure, perhaps another aspect of charm.

They are the whitest of shorebirds. They disdain camouflage. They touch the earth on legs and bill resolutely black.

Sanderlings seem both astonishing and inevitable in their niche. They will pass through again in the spring.

As the spritely Sanderlings moved south the first Purple Sandpiper appeared at Halibut Point to consider winter residence on our shores.

Purple Sandpiper

We will praise this chunky bantam for enlivening harsh days along the sea but charm has flown off with the last of the Sanderlings.

 

Autumn Winds

Kite, Halibut Point


The Autumn wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song he sweeps along
Swaggering boisterously.
--Steve Sabol, "The Autumn Wind"

Gannet, looking toward Plum Island

The mild fall weather was broken last week by falling temperatures and an assault of northwesterly winds rising to 'moderate' gale on the Beaufort Scale. Thinking it might bring out the best in the character of ocean birds I went to the shoreline and tried to keep the camera steady.



Gannets are the overlords of the fishing flock. Most days they soar with the breeze and plunge on target from great heights. In a gale they bring their business down to the whitecaps, patrolling the troughs of the waves. To their long list of physical distinctions I would now add "torque resistant":  they didn't twist apart in their sprint-speed maneuvers.

Red-breasted Mergansers


The wind shifted northeasterly and visited tumult on the shore. Some southward-moving birds that might have stopped at the waters around Halibut Point kept flying toward relative calm on the leeward side of the Cape Ann peninsula.

Strong-swimming mergansers chase fish much as cormorants do. They also demonstrated enough strength of wing to fly directly into the gale on their way around Halibut Point.

Wind is air in a hurry. It moves obediently from higher pressure (such as heavier air over cool land masses) toward lower pressure (such as replacing warm ocean surface air that rises to the upper atmosphere.) The wind has seasonal patterns and many idiosyncrasies imparted by physical geography, the earth's rotation, solar rhythms, and even organic life. The wind is an agent of energy. 

Last Light--Halibut Point, Folly Point, Hog Island

 Toward the end of the second day the gale played itself out. The swells abated into ripples that the waning wind flicked ashore. We'd seen the prologue to the season that sends some birds south and invites others down to our latitude for a winter respite.

Rocks and Sky

“Beauty is the moment when time vanishes and eternity arises.”
― Amit Ray, Walking the Path of Compassion

Rocks and Sea

‟After the extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances... .The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

 

Throughout the night the sea laps at the rocks. Then the dawn fire eases over the horizon with theatrical lighting.

A particular morning lingers in gold.

Another lavishes colors from the palette of water and stone.

Rocks force the water into crests, dissipating energies the sun has invested in the sea and air.

Water atomizes over the rocks in colors blended from the sun and sky.

An opposition of natures resolves into processes of destruction and opportunity at the intersection of rocks and sea.

Eider ducks forage in the turbulent zone.

Their life force cycles a bit of the drama back up into the air, resplendent in creation.

The extravagance proceeds to an infinite standard of beauty.