American Pipet victory. And a bonus Sprague Pipet!

This morning's Sunday walk started slow, I was a couple of minutes late and on the way to the designated meeting point I had to stop and grab a few shots of a coyote. And although I always seem to be apologizing for the light, we had heavy cloud cover, snow and a brisk wind today. Tough to grab a focus point with low light end everything the same colour:

We made the rounds with quite a lot of activity, migrating swallows, Franklin's gulls, various other shorebirds, but no Pipets to start the day. Upon entering the area where one pair of the GHO's are nesting, noticed a pair of Wood ducks up in a tree.

Now I'll be the first to tell you that I am not accustomed to finding ducks in trees, but there you have it.  Of course when you get the opportunity to fire off a couple of shots at a GHO you have to take advantage.

We headed over to one of the drainage ponds where I captured this Red Winged Blackbird. You can see where the wind has actually blown his primary feathers up to reveal the red secondary layer.

We closed out the regularly scheduled portion of our walk with a Great Blue Heron flyby.

So a couple of us decided to see if we could find the American Pipet one last time, with some success, here was a total surprise a Sprague's Pipet, another first for me.

Here is another shot of a pair on the rocks, not a double on the rocks, a pair:)

We also picked up a male Mountain Bluebird for the day which was a total surprise.
I hope everyone has a GREAT week, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRO!!!!!!

Turbo