Baird's Sandpiper. It joins a bunch of shorebirds that are loving the Wenas Lake mud. To some yahoos, the mud's not evident. At least two of them were stuck in the mud -- in their pickups, that is. It seems some yahoos just can't obey the rules, whether it's "No Trespassing" or "No driving on lake bed."
Baird's Sandpiper is the most recent addition to species I've seen this summer at Wenas Lake. I first saw a Baird's there Monday morning, August 4th. Jeff Kozma found it independently later in the day. We'd talked about hoping to find one there and the field marks we use. I said the back looks like white fringed reptile scales. Jeff mentioned the wings being longer than the tail. Well, the scales got me, and I used Jeff's wing length field mark to help confirm my identification.

Shorebirds I've seen (& photographed) at Wenas since mid-July:
Least Sandpipers
Western Sandpipers
Semipalmated Sandpipers
Greater Yellowlegs
Lesser Yellowlegs
Wilson's Snipe
Killdeer
Pectoral Sandpipers (one fattened up nicely over a week there)
Baird's Sandpiper
Spotted Sandpipers
Solitary Sandpipers
Last week a Virginia Rail was out in the mud, doing chest flares with one of a dozen Wilson's Snipe in the mud. Sunday a Red-necked Grebe was out on the lake. It's a great place to bird.