Monday, June 3, 2020,

This is an Oystercatcher nest and those are two Oystercatcher eggs. They are fairly easy to spot here but this is a zoomed in photo and the eggs are in the center of image. If you were to try to spot these eggs on a beach, you would need some very sharp eyes. I knew where this nest was, having spotted it the previous day, but it still took me almost ten minutes to find it again when I returned. As you can see, Oystercatchers do not build intricate nests. Like most other shorebirds, they merely make a shallow scrape in the sand.

This is Mama Oystercatcher who has come to sit on her eggs. She spends most of her time on or near the nest but she does leave it occasionally. While I was taking this series of photos, she only left the nest twice. Once to dance with her mate, and another time to scold a Tern that was perched on a nearby pole. That’s how I managed to get the photo of the uncovered eggs in the first pic. After giving me the once over – I was seated some distance away – she settled back down to incubate her eggs. JK

JK