I had gone to take a picture for posterity of the beach closed in hopes of nesting piping plovers. In the fog beyond the signage were a whole drove of sandpipers that included one red knot and lots of sanderlings. I rushed to the car for the scope and on my return was able to spot two red knots, several ruddy turnstones, a couple or more dunlin, the sanderlings, least sandpipers and probable semi-palmated sandpipers--the dark was bearing down and fog and nearsightedness were also factors in my uncertainty about the latter species but they looked right for semipalmated. No piping plover were apparent but a pair of St. Louis River Alliance monitors, John and Sharon, soon turned up, saying that in separate weeks they had sighted two individual banded male piping plover. Temperature was about 45 F and the wind chill something of a marvel. *Tanya Beyer* http://www.epiphaniesafield.com/home-page.html ---- Join or Leave mou-net: http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=mou-net Archives: http://lists.umn.edu/archives/mou-net.html