In the early morning hours on Sunday, as the first bright rays of sunlight sparkled on the water, bird watchers grabbed their cameras, spotting scopes and tripods and lined up along a bluff.

The 25 to 30 people, who assumed their positions near the South Slough bridge in Charleston, were some of the approximate 100 bird watchers who attended the U.S. Fish & Wildlife’s annual three-day event, the Oregon Shorebird Festival, in its 21st year, which took place Friday through Sunday.

“We came for the whole weekend,” said Charlotte Maloney, of Eugene, who belongs to the Lane County Audubon Society, along with her husband, Jim. “This is the third year Jim’s been here, and the second year I’ve come.”

They spied at least three types of sandpipers through their scopes — buff-breasted, stilt and least.

“It’s been fun,” Maloney said. “We meet up with local birders. We met someone from Idaho at dinner last night.”

The bird watchers met Sunday in front of the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston, the festival’s headquarters, where some of the attendees chose to stay. The festival activities began Friday night with guest speaker, Benjamin Grupe, a biomonitoring assistant with the South Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve. His talk, “Opportunistic oystercatchers at the all-you-can-eat sea urchin buffet,” featured videos showing the foraging behaviors of these noisy wading birds, with strong bills used for smashing or prying open mollusks.

The next morning several bird watchers left the Charleston Boat Marina for a five-hour boat ride.

“On the pelagic trip, people went out 10 miles on a boat,” Maloney said. “This year they saw so many birds.”

“You’re talking tens of thousands of shore birds,” Jim Maloney added

After the boat and land field trips were over on Saturday, bird watchers attended a seafood buffet dinner at the institute’s cafeteria and listened to a presentation by Ron LeValley, a senior biologist with Mad River Biologists. His topic was “Conversations with a snowy plover and other shorebird writings of William Leon Dawson,” author of “The Birds of California.”

Charlotte Maloney said it is a birders’ paradise on the Southwest Oregon Coast in early fall, when birds are beginning their migration to warmer climates from their Arctic nesting grounds.

She pointed to a flock of birds all moving together in unison in a flowing motion.

“See how they move together, all moving at the same time like a school of fish in the air,” she said, dreamily.

“It’s too bad there’s no falcon out there,” her husband said.

“Then they all fly and try to protect themselves from the bird — the raptor,” Maloney added.

She said she loves to come to bird-watching events because she learns from others a lot faster than she does from books.

“I anticipate coming back,” she said. “I really do.”

The Maloneys were on a field trip led by two bird watchers, Russ Namitz, a five-year member of the Cape Arago Audubon Society; and Eric Clough, the president of the society; both residents of Coos Bay. Another group had headed down to Bandon with Paul Sullivan, an Oregon birder who leads field trips for the Portland Audubon Society chapter.

“There must have been 100 people here yesterday,” said a volunteer with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife, Neil Holcomb of Willamette Valley.

The festival was founded in 1979 by Barbara Griffin, of North Bend, who has been to every Shorebird Festival since it began. Griffin also cofounded the Cape Arago chapter of the Audubon Society.

Dawn Grafe, a wildlife biologist with Fish & Wildlife for 10 years, has been in charge of the festival for four years.

About six species of birds, such as great egrets — white with long legs and necks — and scores of seagulls and sandpipers, shared the kelp beds in Charleston on Sunday.

Grafe explained that the least sandpiper is the smallest sandpiper in the world.

The group’s next stop was Cape Arago. Later in the day, they planned to gather at Pigeon Point and Pony Slough.

“At Cape Arago, we do some sea watches,” said Anne Heyerly of Eugene, a member of Lane County Audubon Society and the statewide organization, Oregon Field Ornithologists. “We look at all the small birds on the rocks.”

And that they did, plus more.

Bird watchers at Cape Arago were treated with a visit by a few gray whales.

“Can you see it?” Grafe asked. “It spouts and surfaces. Maybe we’ll see its tail.”

The crowd gasped and shouted, as the whale turned nose down and its tail emerged for a split second.

The gray whales lolled around near the shore for over an hour. The bird enthusiasts watched the mammals for a while before their attention went back to the surf birds.

They called out names of birds, like the marbled murrelet, an endangered species. The flock of small white and brown birds was floating around on the water.

A turkey vulture sat in a nearby tree with a couple of black American crows.

Holcomb, who calls himself a “gypsy biologist,” said, “I try to attend the Shorebird Festival every year I can. I attend a bird walk at least once a month with a group.

“Are you a birder?” he asked, peering over his glasses, with a glint in his eye. “Not yet!” he said, laughing heartily.