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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark B Bartosik" data-source="post: 3394200" data-attributes="member: 18843">Dortmundbirder, Piping Plovers are very easy to get close-up photos, if you know what you are doing. You have to let birds come to you not other way around - not to mention that harassing birds is not only a bad choice to get good photos but, what is more important, negatively impact birds’ welfare… Again, in PIPL case, if you know what you are doing it will be not that uncommon that they will come so close that you will have to control an urge to chase them away (my rig minimum focusing distance is usually 15 feet or so) as they would be too close to get focus on them. Here is an example of bands I was taking about; shown on LETE but they are the same size as color bands used on PIPL - the one in bottom photo. One in the top photo can be difficult to document without a very good rig - they are described as ‘ not field readable‘ (when using scopes, binoculars, etc). BTW, photographers are not photographing banded birds because of ‘aesthetic’ issues. Birders-chasers (tickers - or whatever names are used) are more interesting to find as many birds as possible and not going spend time with PIPLs that love to rest or hop on one feet - and one needs a whole set of color bands, on both legs, to identify individual bird. Cheers,Mark</blockquote>