I call it Beach Panning. It’s one of my favorite ways to photograph birds, laying prone on the wet sandy beach with my telephoto lens trained on a Dunlin or Sanderling or other small shorebird. There’s nothing like it. Except when there are no birds to photograph. Last week, instead of the Beach Panning I had anticipated, I was panning the beach for birds. It was shocking to see the satellite maps showing the density of bird migrations in real time with no birds on the West Coast or the East Coast. At least the Central Flyway was filled with birds. We saw fewer than a dozen shorebirds in a week on the Oregon Coast and those birds were not on an ocean shore. This shot, taken just south of the Devil’s Punch Bowl is devoid of birds. There are a couple of people in the foggy distance.