An Exciting Day

I'm too wiped out to do a proper entry, but I will leave you with some exciting bits from the day. First up, can you identify the bird in the above photo? Hint: It's not a shorebird. When you're ready to guess, the adult plumaged bird can be seen here. No prize, just glory in the comments section.

Second, I met someone totally cool (in my book) on the trip. Long time readers of this blog may recall that I am a big fan of the crop art at the Minnesota State Fair. One of my all time favorite pieces was a portrait of Jackie Chan in 2005. Turns out that one of the women taking the shorebird workshop not only does crop art, but her husband did the Jackie Chan portrait (I totally geeked out). I told her that her cool points had just sky rocketed in my book. Between that and the fact that there is a Strong Bad sticker on her car, leads me to believe that we could be friends outside of birding--if my overwhelming (but sincere) excitement over crop art didn't frighten her. I'm not sure she wants me to completely out her or her husband as crop artists, but I will say that if you visit Cropart.com they have some work up in the gallery section.

Take note of the above photo. Notice anything out of the ordinary? Note the bird coming in for a landing. Do you see tags on the legs?

We found a tagged semi-palmated sandpiper! Normally, I would say that finding a tagged bird is excitement enough--we'll report it, find out where it was banded, how old it is, etc. But I'm even more excited that when it flew in, I was able to tell the trip leader that we had a tagged semi-palmated sandpiper...I identified a semi-palmated sandpiper on my own (sniff, sniff) I've had a total breakthrough!