Here are a few photos of the ruddy turnstone, a common shorebird on St. Martin’s salt ponds and beaches, particularly during the winter. While the spotted sandpiper isn’t spotted during the winter months and the black-bellied plover doesn’t have a black belly most of the time it is here, the ruddy turnstone does, in fact, turn stones. Here you can see this bird putting its bill beneath a stone and then pulling its head up and opening its bill to fling the stone. I’m not sure how easy it will be to see in the smaller resolution here, but in the third photo (where the turnstone’s bill is open) there is a blurry stone flying through the air just to the right of the turnstone’s head. There’s a higher-resolution version here where the flying stone should be easier to see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/theactionitems/10271742206/
