Sanderling

Calidris alba

Nice start to the day with cycle coffee. I then headed to Aberlady to go birdwatching. It wasn't entirely successful as it was very windy and I was getting blown about all over the place which made it very hard to see birds. I got as far as the beach where I got royally sandblasted but I did manage to hide behind a dune long enough to take this small and far away wee Sanderling which was scurrying about in the water. I did better than staying in Edinburgh though as apparently the weather was pretty horrible.

The common noun for Sandlerings is a grain.

Brian Vessey-Fitzgerald speaks of them thusly.

And on the shore in winter they show up white so that you can see them from a long way off. Often as I turn away in the evening I see sanderling caught in the setting sun, gleaming white against the sky that joins the long level sand, and in that moment they seem suspended between earth and heaven, so tiny and so ethereal are they in their pearly-white above the drab deserted sands.