Spotted Ritzafratzen

Spotted Ritzafratzen, Actitis polkalocomentalis
aka Spotted Sandpiper, Actitis macularia
Hallo Bay, AK

While on the brown bear STL in AK last month, we saw a variety of shorebirds I had never seen before. Having been on previous STLs, I had heard Chas talk about Spotted Ritzafratzens before but I had no idea what they looked like. One day after we had spent many hours sitting on a log waiting for the brown bears to come down to the creek, we decided to try to photograph some of the birds near our location. As the immature bald eagle was no challenge for the group, being quite cooperative, Chas and I decided to belly crawl through the very wet sand to photograph this bird. We had no ground pods so we were holding our 500s in front of us as we crawled. There was a large stick blocking part of the bird and I kept asking Chas if he could move over a little more to the right. His angle was no better there but I knew he was almost into the water and I was curious how far I could get him to move. I stopped when he said his arm was in the water. Anyway we eventually got close enough to fill most of the frame and our bird kindly stood on the rock and posed for a few shots before getting down to feed. The bird was still in the same area when we backed out a few minutes later.

I spent a long time trying to find a Spotted Ritzafratzen in my bird field guides, Audobon, Petersons, Sibleys and concluded that it is the same bird as the Spotted Sandpiper and that the Ritzafratzen is found in a parallel universe inhabitated by photographers who are very short on sleep. So if Chas ever suggests to you that the bird you are shooting is a Spotted Ritzafratzen, suggest that he go take a very long nap!!!

Canon 10D with 500IS and 1.4TC, sandheld @1/640@f/8, ISO 200 cropped stick out of bottom of frame and cloned piece of OOF white rock from LRH corner.