Hudsonian Godwits and American Golden Plovers in Comber

Yesterday, a report from ontbirds mentioned Godwits and American golden Plovers in a field in Comber, which is just south of Stoney Point or Pointe-aux-Roches if you prefer the french name. I did street level mapping of the described area, and even the google street level view of this road shows a huge flooded field with shorebirds on the perimeter! The surface area  of this shallow-water-covered field must be over 1km square if not more. Note that in the photo above, there is a small tomaoto field in the forground and a giant area of flooded field behind it. (Side note: Why hasn't ERCA flooded the shorebird cell at Hillman?)

Hudsonian Godwit blends in with the grass in the bottom left quadrant of this image

My first approach to bird this area was walk directly into the farmers' field and scan the edge of the water for any shorebirds with long, upward curved bills. What I found was a mono-culture of 400+ American Golden Plovers with a few Black bellied Plovers mixed in. Killdeer and a few SP Plovers were around in lesser numbers. Singles of Yellowlegs and other seasonal shorebirds were seen in the tomato fields along Comber Line Rd.

It was cool to see the birds take off when a raptor approached the group. It was pointed out to me that Black Bellied Plovers have Black "armpits" and American Golden Plovers just have a uniform light grey under-wing and armpit.

When a Peregrine Falcon would occasionally stir up the group, four birds stood out from the others. They were bigger and stood out quite obviously from the American Golden Plover 'swarms'. In fact my first look at the Godwits were in flight as shown in the photo below. I only saw four Hudsonian Godwits both in flight and when feeding in the flooded tomato fields.

I visited this site from 8-9:30 this morning and again from 2-3 this afternoon with a family Colasanti's visit in between. I thank the many kind scope-bearing birders for pointing out the resting and feeding Godwits that I would have missed without their kind info-sharing. Of the 8 people I met, 3 were readers of Nerdy for Birdy!!!  Very cool!

I'll cut this short here,  but basically, adding two more lifers today was very cool and exciting. I can't believe this amazing mudflat is so close to home and I didn't know about it until yesterday. It's closer to Windsor than Tilbury, and seemingly better than Tilbury SL. Thank you Ellen Smout for posting these excellent birds & shorebird habitat to Ontbirds. I only wish I knew of this earlier!

Good birding,
Dwaynejava

Lifer Summary:
American Golden Plover #284
Hudsonian Godwit #285

Bonus Quiz Question!!!

Quiz Question: Dowitchers at the top of this photo. Long billed or Short?