Rondeau Ric

Purple sandpiper, Rondeau Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada, Oct 19, 2019. Got a call from a fellow birder of a cooperative purple sandpiper on the beach. It allowed us to get close and only flew when an eagle buzzed the beach. it returned a few minutes later. Calidris maritima The Purple Sandpiper has the northernmost winter range of any shorebird.

Purple sandpiper Erieau, Ontario, Canada, Jan 18, 2019. With a dunlin. Love the description of this bird, from Cornell Lab of Ornithology - "A stout shorebird, the Purple Sandpiper breeds in the tundra and winters along rocky shores of the Atlantic Coast. Despite its name, it appears mostly slate-gray in winter, with only a faint purplish gloss, and shows no purple at all in breeding plumage." So what was wrong with the pudgy sandpiper or slat-grey sandpiper? Calidris maritima