Gray's Harbor NWR

Terrific weather yesterday for my trek to Gray's Harbor National Wildlife Refuge in Hoquiam, Washington.  This is the time of year that shorebirds stop over on their migration up to northern Alaska, and I was curious to see this event.  The park website suggests visiting during a four hour window surrounding high tide, and by the time I drove to the parking lot and then hiked a few miles to the viewing station it was exactly high tide.  The shorebirds eat in the mud flats just above the tide level, so it turns out the high tide is sort of like the eye of the storm.  There wasn't anything going on, just one mass of birds sitting on a large log that is partially visible in the background of the photo.  After about an hour, the tide began to recede and tiny batches of these birds, mostly sandpiper and dunlin, started arriving and feeding along the shoreline.  I was well out of my league here, both in bird identification ability and lens size, but I learned a lot from the birders and wildlife photographers on the viewing platform as we waited for the birds to arrive.