#whimbrels

Hudsonian Whimbrel Numenius hudsonicus

Excerpt from this story from The Cornell Lab:

I am waiting on a sandy island along the South Carolina coast, on a late evening in May when the low light has gilded everything around me—the waving cordgrass where Marsh Wrens sing, the beach where plovers and sandpipers scurry, the flocks of Black Skimmers that row by with mothlike wingbeats and peevish calls. I have been told that if I wait here for dark, I will see a miracle…a word I use with careful deliberation.

With dusk, the miracle arrives.

Flocks of Whimbrels appear, a few dozen at first, then by low hundreds, then in such numbers that I have a hard time keeping any sort of count. Drawn shoreward from the distant, marshy horizons, they fly in ragged lines and loose clusters, untidy chevrons of big, strong shorebirds, nut-brown bodies and long, flashing wings, beaks curved like the crescent moon that will appear in the black sky a few hours later. A few circle, calling, but most land without preamble on a wide, flat expanse of over­wash beach on the edge of the island, facing into the wind in dense-packed ranks. More, and more, and still more.

A little before eight o’clock, a huge flock sweeps toward me out of an orange sunset. They move in a wide sheet, high at first and then spilling toward the ground like water flowing down a low hill, bunching and veering en masse to their left, following the beach on which I stand. There are perhaps a thousand of them. Seven-whistle calls ring like old brass sleigh bells. They surge around me like river water parted by a rock; there is a moment of wild mayhem, the air churned by motion and wings, and they are gone.