The beach is covered with seaweed and teeming with shorebirds. We recognize them all. The primary peep is the sanderling, running down with the waves and back again, like a clockwork toy. Mixed in with them are the dunlin with their little black bellies and slightly drooping bills. One piping plover, the smallest bird on the beach. They look like little round bald-headed, collared, friar tucks. Ruddy turnstones in full bloom. A pack of red knots at the edge. The larger black bellied plovers are farther up the beach from the water. The occasional willet. A great blue heron.
Royal terns pound the surf with their death-defying dives. Least terns flutter, like tiny graceful little bats until they spot their prey and dive full-speed into water that is way too shallow to be behaving like that. Water about the depth we used to skim board on when we were kids. Forster terns, sandwich terns and gull-billed terns. Black skimmers.
Squadrons of pelicans pass. Cormorants fly in formation.
Laughing gulls are everywhere.
