Red Knot at McKinley Beach 5/23/23

A Red Knot was found this morning on McKinley Beach. This bird was just starting to get its reddish orange coloring in. It was very cool looking. If we get one in Milwaukee, its usually just the plain scaly gray with a slight buff coloring. As soon as I got the message about it, I left work to try for it. The beaches in Milwaukee County have been overtaken by joggers, dog walkers and metal detecting walkers! If we get shorebirds, it is at sunrise and then they don’t stay very long before being chased off by one of those 3 people/dogs. The good thing about McKinley Beach, it’s fenced off, so people don’t swim in the small cove, due to the constant riptides. Because of that, I figured there was a good chance it would stick around a few hours. I arrived just before 8am. I made my way to the fence and saw it was on the south end. I walked out to the middle of the beach and sat down by the water. Within 5 minutes it was walking towards me. It got as close as 25′ before turning around and working back the other direction. Heat distortion was already quite bad at that time, which is unusual for that early. I took over 600 photos and less than 20 turned out halfway decent. I knew it was an issue, which is why I took so many. I could hear the autofocus on my lens constantly searching, to lock on. I watched it feed up and down the shoreline a few times and that was good enough for me. I thought I might try in the afternoon when the lighting would be better, however I never made it back down there. Photos below are from the early morning. Enjoy!