The tide breathes in and out at Narragansett, and the sanderlings keep time like tiny metronomes—stitch-legged, bright-eyed, forever “late for something.” They chase the edge of the waves, retreat, and chase again, probing the mirror of wet sand for sand fleas and pinhead clams the ocean just coughed up. From a distance they look pale as sea-foam; up close you catch freckles of rust from their Arctic summer wardrobes, halfway shed into winter silver.
I got a big kick out of their single-file, follow-the-leader approach to meal surveillance—like a pint-sized parade with no floats, just beaks down and business in mind. Then, without warning, they’ll cluster up on the spot like somebody called a town meeting. No agenda, no roll call—just a burst of bird gossip before scattering again to “work the line.”
It’s a funny thought: these birds, light as a deck of cards, comically busy at our ankles, have just flown down from the top of the world. They raised chicks under a sun that never sets, then slipped past Greenland weather and Atlantic squalls to make Rhode Island a rest stop with table service. The wrack line is their buffet; the surf their drumbeat.
Watch how they move as one. A ripple of decision runs through the flock and—zip—they’re airborne, a flash of white bellies, then gray backs, then white again as they bank and settle twenty yards down, right where the next wave sighs away. No arguments. No meetings. Just perfect choreography written by the tide.
By dusk, footprints crosshatch the beach: ours long and lumbering, theirs like tiny quotations around the day. Tomorrow they’ll be gone, or maybe a mile downshore doing the same sacred silliness. And I’ll be here, lens capped or not, grateful that the ocean keeps inviting them—and me—back.
How lucky am I.
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