@QMS The lighthouses are a current forever stamp... nice ones...

I avoided scotch on the rocks for a long time, and then I finally tried it. Famous Grouse of course! Not bad at all.

Boats and rocks, not such a good match. At youtube I watch drain plug mafia, and dingy content I think it is, two channels with boating idiots on parade, weekend warriors with more money than brains as they tend to be. Haulover inlet vids can be good too, if you like watching others stuff it... These are channels for learning how NOT to go boating.

#1.2

will have to look into it
I use the light houses mostly to avoid scotch on the rocks

@janis b Hi Janis, and all,

I think this pic was taken in the concrete channel known as the Los Angeles River. Will have to check the roll it came from. Long shot it could be from Newport Bay. Winter at bays and lagoons in socal. But anywhere really.

I find it interesting you and SP think of them as solitary. Most are fairly to highly gregarious. But I suppose it is in a specific habitat as a rule. Where tidal, and mudflats are best. Bays, lagoons, and even inland at freshwater rivers, ponds, or lakes, as long as there is mudflats. When life gives you mud, look for shorebirds. At high tide they gather in roosts, sometimes in tens of thousands. At low tide they disperse on the tidal flats, when a telescope is needed. This flock had a couple thousand in it, the pic is only a part of it. Spotted are one of the very solitary types, as is, you guessed it, Solitary Sandpiper. Those two are freshwater sandpipers.

Most breed in high latitudes, as in the arctic. Many winter in South America. There are banded Western Sandpipers as in my pic, that do Alaska to Chile every year. The Godwit of recent news for doing what 10k miles in 11 days a couple times is an example of what kind of long distance migrants many are.

Amongst them are a bunch of types or groups. There are grasspipers that you see in the grass, rockpipers that are always on rocks, but most are near water's edge. Curlews, Avocets, Godwits, Snipe, Phalaropes, Plovers, Dowitchers, are all shorebirds, or sandpipers. The Am. Woodcock is a forest sandpiper! I have seen 30 species in a day a few times. Once at Jamaica Bay NWR in Brooklyn, and once at Corpus Christi, TX are two I remember off the top of my head. Probably in CA too. Fall is when. Now. Take all your dough and go to your nearest bay or lagoon, and look for people looking through a telescope. Those are the sandpiper people. Especially in July, only ones to battle deerflies to see sandpipers when they first start coming back south.

gotta fly friends! take care!

#3 #3.1 #3.2

Thank you for the Sandpiper photos. Like Q and Social I only knew them as fairly solitary figures on the beach on a calm day. Were you out on a boat when you saw the flock?