Saturday we continued to explore outdoors, even though our snowmobile trip out on the land was cut short. Leah had headed to the water lake to fish, so Travis, Hilary and I headed inland to explore. We drove out to Second Bridge, where Lapland Longspurs launched themselves into the air, and floated down filling the sky with song.
As I'd only had the briefest of views of Horned Larks this spring, we turned around to the plateau between First and Second Bridges. Usually it is a pretty reliable spot for larks, but we didn't see any flying, or see any sign, so we parked and walked towards the river gorge.
I wasn't paying attention and was startled when we flushed a sandpiper, I saw the white rump flash and assumed it was White-rumped Sandpiper, but when I photographed it all the field marks said Baird's. They are, to me, difficult birds to separate at times, but when it flushed again I could see for sure it was a White-rumped. If nothing else it served to make me even more confused, were that possible.
There were several sandpipers in the area, at times there were four coursing through the sky, chasing each other. We stopped for some photos and then walked on, at which point I saw a bird scuttling along the ground and as I watched it in my binoculars it settled down in a clump of heather, just below me.
See it?
I quickly got the children ready and then we flushed her briefly. There in a little depression were four eggs, which seem impossibly large for a bird that small. Darkly mottled, they would be very hard to see if I hadn't known exactly where to look.
I quickly showed Travis and Hilary, photographed the nest and we backed up. Almost immediately she worked her way back to the nest, and with a pause just inches away, she watched as we continued to move off before settling back on the eggs.
It was an incredible experience for them, and the cap on a pretty good day.