Semipalmated Plover eating a worm - video - East Coast, USA

Slow-motion video of a Semipalmated Plover tossing around, tearing apart, eating a just caught earthworm:

Semipalmated Plover (Charadrius semipalmatus) tearing apart and eating a just caught earthworm - East Coast, USA

Even though on this outing, I didn’t get much photos in the “best” light, I’m still happy with this encounter. As the morning progressed, clouds moved in and gave me another few hours to photograph shorebirds. Carefully navigating the mudflats at this particular location, page 28 of my "Fall Shorebird Migration of the Tri-state Area - New Jersey, New York, Connecticut" ebook - https://www.greggard.com/location-guides/shorebirds-tri-state-nj-ny-ct-photography-ebook , I settled on a Greater Yellowlegs wading in a shallow water outflow. By staying low and motionless, more birds started to arrive with this plover being one of them. Literally within a minute of landing, it caught this giant earthworm. I said to myself: “there is no way it will eat it whole” 🙈 but I impatiently waited to to see what will happen with it. As you can see from the video, it started to toss this worm around to tear it apart to smaller, more manageable pieces. That was the trick! The whole ordeal lasted for about 5 minutes, giving me a chance to take many photographs and videos. This particular video was slowed down to 50% to give you a chance to see what is happening.

Video captured with a Sony A9II camera paired with a Sony 600mm f/4 OSS GM lens + 1.4x teleconverter at 1080p resolution and upscaled to 4K with help of Topaz Enhance Ai software: https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai/ref/494/

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Here are some of my favorite shorebird guides for a quick read (to save money buy used books):