Sunday Morning on Sandy Point

Terns, Sandy Point, Newburyport, MA

What would make someone get up at 5:30 and drive an hour to a beach on a Sunday morning? Perhaps the prospect of seeing a swallow-tailed flycatcher (unseen, though spotted by someone else later in the morning...). Or perhaps the sudden realization that summer shorebird watching time was slipping away.

So what was happening at Sandy Point? Swallows, mostly. In fact, Plum Island was saturated with them, some primordial numbers in roadside trees, would lift up in black clouds and then fall down again.

These tree swallows chose to rest at the beach, along with hundreds of others.


Their shorebird brethren were also there in huge numbers. Sandpipers,

plovers


and a few turnstones (flipping seaweed).


The terns discovered a food source while I was there and were diving and diving.



Meanwhile, on shore, kingbirds.

and a sweet young yellowthroat.