Not Least of All

Construction at Sylvan Water, Green-Wood Cemetery’s largest pond, has necessitated a severe lowering of the water level. Mud or murk, flats have resulted. This has attracted some Solitary Sandpipers and both waterthrushes. But pictured today is a rarer visitor to the interior of the borough: Least Sandpier/Calidris minutilla.

The bird, in seeming response to a warning call from some bird in a tree nearby, hunkered down, and glanced up with one eye high to the sky. There may have been passing predator, but I didn’t see anything.

These are not uncommon around the city’s edges. But this was my first in Green-Wood.