From the rhythmic dash of a Sanderling chasing foam to the haunting call of a Black-bellied Plover drifting in on the salt air, shorebirds and seabirds transform the edges of land and sea into something transcendent.

I never tire of watching them — gulls wheeling in wind, loons calling across quiet bays, or flocks of sandpipers pulsing like a single organism. Their migrations are nothing short of astonishing: some travel from Alaska to New Zealand and back again, navigating entire hemispheres with pinpoint precision.

These birds are the pulse of the tide, the heartbeat of open skies, and reminders of the wild vastness that begins where the beach ends.

“For shorebirds, the world is still a coherent whole, not a scattering of borders and boundaries.”
— Scott Weidensaul, A World on the Wing