{"id":7383,"date":"2019-02-10T09:36:08","date_gmt":"2019-02-10T17:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/larryeifert.com\/?page_id=7383"},"modified":"2019-02-10T09:36:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-10T17:36:10","slug":"2019-07","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/published-writings-and-art\/salish-sea-stories-48-north-magazine\/2019-07\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 – 1 Sanderlings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Peep, peep, peep. And then more peeps. That\u2019s actually what many call these little birds, and others like them \u2013 \u2018peeps\u2019. Migrating sanderlings (their real name) show up beginning in late summer and by winter they are very common here. Most adults stay on the outer coast, but wintering birds in the Salish Sea are likely juveniles. My paintings show winter feathers, but in summer their top half darkens to a brightly mottled russet that really shows them off. I\u2019d imagine it\u2019s an obvious evolutionary adaption of pale winter camo for sandy beaches and brown summer feathers where they nest on the closest land to the North Pole, rocky shores with brown grasses. The camo birds that didn\u2019t get the matching colors got picked off by the predators. The birds that blended survived to make another generation.<\/p>\n

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Sanderlings are the only sandpipers without a hind toe, so they swim quite well. They also hang out freely with other small sandpipers, the \u2018peeps\u2019, like semipalmated and western sandpipers, all of which make the same diagnostic calls as they forage shorelines, as if they\u2019re talking about it. Ballet dancers at dodging surf, they move in and out, back and forth, always right at the edge looking to grab food morsels that get caught in that first break of a sandy wave. When at rest, look for them to stand on one foot, then the other, and when threatened they\u2019ll actually hop away on that same foot before taking flight. They\u2019re most interesting birds that make a winter walk around the marina fun \u2013 and a use for the boat binoculars you got for Christmas.<\/p>\n

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Peep, peep, peep. And then more peeps. That\u2019s actually what many call these little birds, and others like them \u2013 \u2018peeps\u2019. Migrating sanderlings (their real name) show up beginning in late summer and by winter they are very common here. Most adults stay on the outer coast, but wintering birds in the Salish Sea are … Continue reading 2019 – 1 Sanderlings<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7417,"parent":6453,"menu_order":41,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-7383","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7383"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7426,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/7383\/revisions\/7426"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/larryeifert.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}