I spent a couple hours one morning last week at the Jekyll Island Banding Station; it’s Georgia’s oldest continually operated station. There’s always a nice variety of birds and the folks who run the station, for a couple weeks each fall, are happy for visitors.

This particular warbler, a Black and White, was quite feisty!

And handsome, of course…

Note the “target” penned on the bander’s finger… he says it gives the birds somewhere to aim their bites!

; )

St. Simons Island is one of the coolest places to spend the low tide hours… the sea retreats almost a half mile and leaves in its place endless tidepools and sandbars for exploring…

When I’m finished looking for seashells, there’s always birds to entertain me…

like these Boat-tailed Grackles playing King of the (sand)Castle

: )

(I forget how noisy they are when I’m away from the coast for too long!)

Royal Terns are grown, but still begging from their parents.

(endlessly entertaining!)

A walk among the birds at low tide teaches me to measure happiness by nothing I can hold… nothing I can catch.

; )

I sneak close on my belly, camera in hand, for a better look at the spot of mustard on a Sandwich Tern’s bill…

and squat low over the water with a Willet.

The beach is stretched out as far as it can go as I pause to consider a young Piping Plover feeding at the far end of a tidepool…

Can my imagination make this bird a familiar?

(Could be… though its banded companion was hatched in the Great Lakes area this past summer.)

I keep walking and exploring the quiet changes the outgoing tide has left; entire oceans are moved one inch at a time…