An early morning beach hike encountered a flock of surfbirds (their actual name) foraging along the rocks at low tide.
They seemed to be focused on a type of seaworm among the rockweed, and weren’t above going after a neighbor who found one…
Lots of wing stretching, limbering up for the day. A long patient wait among the rocks allowed the flock to come very close, and gave me a chance to get these photos.
TheZoo 
They are probably after pile worms that live down at the base of the rocks.
Pile worms are excellent fishbait you know.
Thanks for this tip… when you mentioned them earlier I thought I might have to take a jack knife and start digging into the pilings. Rooting around in the weeds will be much easier.
Very pretty birds.
I’m settling into places I have found birds to be, and waiting. Their behavior can be very entertaining, and as vinylspear pointed out, I can learn things.
Things with wings and winged things make for glad tidings!
Definitely good company!
I came upon a peregrine falcon that had caught either one of these or something similar, couldn’t tell from the pile of feathers it had left on the sand. Got a couple of photos, but nothing worth putting up.
I blush to admit I’ve never heard of surfbirds. Great photos, as always.
I’m only able to identify many of the shorebirds after getting back, downloading the photos, and looking them up.
Oh great more wet paws. I already have 8 of them.
I often get back with at least two. Came across a strange set of tracks in the sand last week, took me awhile to figure out it was a seal that had flippered and humped it’s way down the beach.
I wish I were somewhere near. In this area I live in, more and more ugly concrete condos are being built, all the beautiful birds have left. Now we mostly only get sparrows. I like them, sparrows, they are wonderfully unruly, but I miss all the others we used to have.
An upside to the downturn of the economy… the pace of developing every last stretch of land that has a view has slowed. People will continue to multiply, wildlife will continue to decline.
Raven, I could use some downturn in the building activities here it is awful. I’ll try to find pictures of the birds we used to see here and post some, I might just make a post out of it.
An unpleasant habit I see here is the tendency to ignore older, empty housing and commercial establishments that could be renovated, while they continue to bulldoze and develop further up the hill and into the forests.