19 Feb A peck of purple pipers in Point Pleasant Park

A nicely camouflaged Purple Sandpiper resting on a rock along the shoreline of Point Pleasant Park in Halifax earlier this winter:

Purple Sandpipers breed in the high Arctic and spend their winters along the Atlantic coast from the Newfoundland’s South Coast to North Carolina. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology reports they have the northernmost breeding ground of any shorebird. We are their sunny south. Click on the image for a larger version.

They love rocks, says photographer Joshua Barss Donham.

I’ve never seen a Purple Sandpiper when that wasn’t on a rock. There is always a small flock at Point Pleasant Park, varying in size from year to year. This year, I saw seven feeding together. They are great to take take pictures of because they let you so very close to them. I usually see them first in early January, and they sometimes hang around into April.