Dip, Dip, Dip

Bent double at the edge of Airoli Creek, a common sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos) dips its bill to the still water and meets its own reflection. It’s a small, trim wader — brown above, clean white below, with a neat white notch that pushes up in front of the folded wing, the surest way to tell it from its cousins.

The sandpiper is known by its habits as much as its looks. It works the water’s edge alone, forever teetering — bobbing its rear end up and down as it walks, as though it can’t quite keep still. In the process, picking up small insects, crustaceans, and worms from the water’s surface.

It breeds beside the rivers and lakes of temperate Eurasia and comes south to India for the cold months, trading snowmelt for these tidal mudflats.

This one had the morning, and the mirror-calm water, to itself.