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Project Noah Nature School
Calidris alpina pacifica
Flock of birds, mostly Dunlin, on beach.
Coastal area within a moist temperate coniferous forest biome.
Spotted on the beach fronting the USN Pacific Beach Resort and Conference Center. Unfortunately, the camera focused on the ocean, not the birds on the beach, so the bird images are not sharp. The second image, with the focus somewhat sharpened using a photo-editor, is a cropped close-up of some birds in profile. It reveals that they have longish, curved bills. The third image, cropped from a camcorder screen grab, shows the birds and seagulls together. The birds appear to be ~ 20% - 25% the size of the seagulls.
The actions of left and right clicking vary across the whole range of OS and browser combinations so it is difficult to write any hard and fast actions. IE7 and below cause major problems with PN, while 8 and above cannot be installed on older PCs without major hardware modifications, and still have many pitfalls. Same applies to Windows 7 and above. Chrome and Firefox work well but have differing menu options for right click and extensions need installing to increase the options. None of the combinations I use go to full size on left click as PH restricts the displayed vertical size to 720 pixels on my 1920x1080 screen (67% of display setting). Right clicking in Chrome gives the option to display up to 1200 pixels, which is the maximum allowed in either direction by PN. Pictures larger than this size which are posted to PN are stored on a secure server and a copy is reduced to a maximum of 1200 pixels for PN use.
Thanks for the ID and commentary Malcolm,and the tip. As to the latter, it works, but I get the same result simply by left-clicking the image.
Meantime, the gulls are probably juvenile western gulls (Larus occidentalis), with reported length of 22-27 in (59-69 cm) which correlates closely (degree of correlation ~ 0.8) though not exactly with the estimate that the dunlin are 20%-25% the size of the co-imaged gulls. The link gives the length of dunlin as 17-21 cm, or about 30%-35% of the length of western gulls.
A tip or you. If you click on the first picture it will come up larger with a black surround (this does not work in most versions of Internet Explorer). You can then right click and select "Show image in new tab" and you will see this http://lh3.ggpht.com/4OE9soaGae-FEOosbYQ...
You have several species here. In the 1st 2 pictures the ones with black bellies are Dunlin, those behind them with pale bellies and greyer backs could be Sanderling. There may be other species also, such as Stints and Sandpipers. A comparison with Gulls for size is difficult because there are many species of Gull of very different sizes. Perhaps someone who knows what to expect in that area at that time of year (May) will be able to narrow it own a bit further. As Dunlin are in the majority I would use that as the common name. You can look up the scientific name on Google.
Spotted on May 10, 2005
Submitted on Dec 28, 2013
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