Sharp-Tailed Sandpiper from eastern Siberia turns up in Alameda, California

Sharp-Tailed Sandpiper from eastern Siberia turns up in Alameda, California

A few days after I moved to Alameda, I set out on an exploratory walk of nearby Crown Beach. As I continued south on Shoreline Drive, past the bowling alley and apartments buildings and onto the sliver of a trail between a row of houses and the San Francisco Bay, my jaw actually dropped at the sight of hundreds of shorebirds—marbled godwits and western sandpipers, avocets and black-necked stilts, willets and black-bellied plovers—who were dabbli…