Curious to see what Isaias might have churned up, I headed out for a beach walk early this morning. Though the hurricane made landfall about 300 miles northwest of me, our waves were higher than normal.

Surprisingly, there was not as much interesting flotsam and jetsam as I anticipated. Sadly, there were plenty of small pieces of litter to fill my bag.

Even more interesting were the birds. Since migration started a few weeks ago there are more species of birds on our shores. As I watched a small group of Red Knots, I noticed that a couple of them were banded.

I was too far away to read the identifying code on the bands but the pale green color told me they were banded in the United States (oddly, the bands look white in my photo).

This small shorebird has one of the longest known annual migration routes, flying from the Arctic down to Tierra del Fuego in South America each winter. That’s roughly 18,000 miles round trip each year!

This group will probably continue on their way when the weather clears, though in recent years more and more have been wintering along the Gulf coast. A phenomena that scientists want to better understand (hence the bands).

Yet another wonderful beach walk…