Monday, November 5, 2012

Do You Have Yellow Legs?

Dear Friends,

Just a quick note today to tell you something funny. When we are at the beach Tío and I spend a lot of time looking at the birds through our binoculars. We identify them and love to watch their behavior. We saw a Great Blue Heron catch a big fish! Here on the island we have seen:

Great Blue Heron
Sanderling
Great Tailed Grackle
Caracara
Snowy Egret
Ruddy Turnstone
Brown Pelican
Caspian Tern
Royal Tern
Gull-billed Tern
Aplomado Falcon
Black Bellied Plover
Willet
Laughing Gull
Ring-billed Gull
Savannah Sparrow

But, we haven't seen a Piping Plover. That's a bird that Tío has never seen and he's been bird watching for like 30 years! There are only about 6500 of them in the whole world and they only live here on the Gulf coast and on the Atlantic coast. The ranger said he saw a couple of them last week, so we've been looking and looking for them.

The quick way to tell a Piping Plover from a Black Bellied Plover is the Piping has yellow legs. We've been wandering up and down the beach looking at bird legs through our binos. We say "leg check time!" Finally Daisy and I started yelling to the birds, "Do any of you have yellow legs?" heeeheeee! And we told the gulls we would give them a cracker if they could find us a bird with yellow legs. It might sound crazy, but it was really funny at the time and we laughed so hard!

Tomorrow is our last day on this island before we move on, and you can bet we will be looking for yellow legs!

Love,
Kiki

1 comment:

  1. I checked all my sisters and brother, none of us have yellow legs, so none of us are who you wanted to see. LOL!!

    You have seen a lot of birds and labeled them, that must be tons of fun, where are you going next, have fun, miss you ..

    Yada Yada,
    Emi

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