No storms at New Buff

 A line of thunderstorms appeared to be bearing down on the northern half of the county this morning, but New Buffalo looked clear, so New Buffalo it was!

An solitary Avocet awaited the sunrise.  It's still mostly in breeding plumage, though you can see some winter gray coming into the face

The avocet dwarfed the Killdeer that walked past it, which in turn dwarfed an adult Semipalmated Plover who also enjoyed some morning sun.

I like the composure better of the bird on a rocky Great Lakes beach, but there was less sunrise at this point...

The most interesting birds were a couple mergansers which (8/12 edits after a communique from Adam lol italicized), after some study, turned out to be Red-breasteds Hooded's in eclipse juvenile plumage.  A few years ago there were a pair of eclipse Common Mergs (that I didn't get right) so hopefully take 2 was a success! (nope). Of course the pics are absolute garbage so I'm not leading off with them.  But the pink bills (and size in comparison to Mallards) crossed Hooded off the list. made me think they couldn't be Hooded and I must have rounded up their size in my mind.  The shape did seem a little off, but I couldn't get past the pink bills.  Sibley doesn't show young hooded with bright bills, but some internet searches pull them up pretty easily.  Common in eclipse would have a much stronger demarcation between the neck and the breast.

There's some much better phone-scoped video of the birds that shows the color a lot better than this really low light effort