Juvenile Least Sandpipers are among the most beautiful of shorebirds.  Their gorgeous white-fringed feathers and propensity for allowing close approach combine to make them a treat every single summer during shorebird season.  Sure, young Short-billed Dowitchers are also attractive creatures, American Avocets and Wilson’s Phalaropes are just plain neat to see, and everyone likes to see a rare Siberian shorebird, but this birder in the northeastern United States invariably considers it a good shorebird outing even if all of the above are lacking but a cooperative young Calidris minutilla wanders close by.

What a great little bird!  Here’s hoping that there are lots of them this year so there will be lots next year and so on and so forth ad infinitum.