And a chance encounter with an old friend.
1/5000, f/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in
Three days ago, near the end of the auto tour loop at Bear River MBR, I was lucky enough to find several migrating Solitary Sandpipers. As I was approaching them I expected them to be Greater or Lesser Yellowlegs so I was pleasantly surprised when they turned out to be Solitary Sandpipers, a species I see far less often.
I was also surprised that they were so calm with me so close. When I first approached them, this bird stopped and stared at me for a while, just to make sure I was no threat. After that they calmly went about their business.
1/5000, f/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in
They may have accepted me, but they were extremely wary of potential threats from the sky. I saw this upward-looking pose multiple times from several of the sandpipers.
1/6400, f/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in
There were three of them in the group but this was one of the few photos I got with more than one of them in the frame. Not a good shot but it verifies that there was more than one of them.
1/6400, f/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in
They didn’t give me much in the way of interesting poses, or if they did I had the ‘wrong’ bird in my viewfinder when it happened. This bird lifted off and…
1/6400, f/6.3, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in
flew a short distance to a different spot on the water but I didn’t have a very good angle on it.
At that point I figured I’d been lucky. Except for a single vehicle I’d had the refuge completely to myself all morning and I’d already spent quite a while with the sandpipers and taken many photos of them. I knew that…
my good friend and blog follower April Olson was approaching from about a quarter mile behind me (in her rental car while her car was being repaired). I’d taken this photo earlier in the morning but while I was with the sandpipers I could see her approaching so I drove on down the road so April would have a better experience with the sandpipers with me not there.
Eventually, when both April and I had reached the end of the auto tour loop, we had a good long visit in our vehicles. It’d been a long while since we’d visited so we took the opportunity to catch up on a lot of stuff. It was at that point that she told me that by the time she got to the sandpipers they’d all moved off to much farther away.
Our visit was one of the highlights of my morning. April’s one of the good guys.
Ron
Some notes about the last photo.
- That area of the refuge is fairly desolate looking because managers have sprayed the invasive phrags so they’re all dead. But as you can see in the photo, the swallows don’t seem to mind.
- In the background near the top of the photo you can see one of the erosion benches of old Lake Bonneville. I believe that bench is called the Bonneville Level. When the lake reached that level about 15,000 years ago, most of it drained through Red Rock Pass into the Snake River Drainage, creating one helluva flood. Today’s Great Salt Lake, what’s left of it, is a remnant of Lake Bonneville.
- If Great Salt Lake continues to decline, as I expect it to, I propose changing its name to Not So Great Salt Lake. Not completely tongue in cheek either. Then, when the lake is completely gone, we can call it Great Poison Flats, as my good friend Jim DeWitt has suggested.
Autor Ron Dudley
