After an extended period of overall dry weather in the area the rains finally arrived starting yesterday and then ramping up overnight into most of today with several inches of rain. Given the date and the weather conditions I had high hopes that some shorebirds would make an appearance in the area. I checked briefly on my way to work yesterday but did not find anything but did notice multiple freshly tilled farm fields that look promising. After a very long shift at work I finally was able to get out this morning in the pouring rain and headed to the East Meadows. The roads were passable but getting quite muddy and the fields were flooded in spots so I started scanning from the car (shore birding in the valley can be a bit frustrating as you scan through one field after another with nothing and then some birds will appear...much more scanning then actually seeing anything typically). I turned up a few Killdeer right away, which is always a promising sign. I then turned up first one and then two and eventually five American Golden Plovers in a variety of plumages. I got out of the car and set up the scope and got some better looks and marginal digiscoped photos. I continued to scan and got a Buff breasted Sandpiper (which quickly disappeared over a small rise not to be seen again despite a lot of looking) and a Black bellied Plover plus several Least Sandpipers. The birds were all moving around quite a bit and at times the rain came down so heavy I could barely see across some of the fields. I had a couple more Black bellied Plovers show up before a lot of the birds moved further away and I was totally soaked. I relocated to another vantage point and the views were a little better as I could use my car to block the worst of the wind driven rain. As I continued to scan the fields the American Golden Plovers continued to work back and forth across the fields and a couple of Semipalmated Plovers dropped in to join them and then quickly disappeared into an unharvested potato field. Unharvested potato fields are super frustrating to scan for shorebirds as the deep furrows give the birds lots of places to hide and you can only view a few furrows from any single vantage point. I suspect some of the other shorebirds worked their way into the unharvested fields and therefore disappeared from view. I got the word out about the bird on eBird and others showed up with some continuing for hours after I left. They had multiple other species show up but I had no energy to head back over so no additional species for me for what turned out to be World Shorebird Day. I also made a couple brief checks at Winsor Dam but did not turn up anything noteworthy.
