Piping Plover

I usually do everything I can to avoid human influence/objects in my shots, but I do love finding banding birds and reporting them to the appropriate outlets. It turns out that this bird of unknown sex, 48F, was banded in North Dakota as a recently-hatched juvenile in June of 2017! It has likely been migrating between there and Texas each winter since! So, the photographer in me rues the band while the birder in me is stoked to know something about the subject's history. It's kinda cool to think that I added another data point to what we know about this individual.

South Padre Island, Cameron County, Texas, 11/14/21
Canon 600mm f/4 IS II + 1.4x III on EOS R5
1/4000 at f/5.6, ISO 1000