Pectoral Sandpiper (Digiscoped)
Pectoral Sandpiper (Digiscoped)
Pectoral Sandpiper (Digiscoped)
Quail next ?
Saturday morning selfie
Plenty of hours of birding at the gravel pits over the weekend resulted in some super finds. Starting off with a Friday evening shift which resulted with a single Curlew and my first site Little Egret flying along the A46 side of the reserve. A very useful two point bird for the patch challenge. There were tremendous numbers of House martins feeding on the open muddy area as well as 500+ Swifts swooping around my head.
My route on Saturday was slightly different starting at the top of the pits. Whitethroats were calling along the hedgerow and it looked like Stock Doves have displaced our pair of Little Owls. The Red-legged Partridges were coming out from every where whist a Green Woodpecker was on one of the dead trees. The best sighting was a Sparrowhawk chasing the Yellowhammers in the service road field.
On Sunday morning I met up with Jon as normal at Pophills. He had seen a juvenile Osprey down on the River Arrow just a couple of miles from the pits about 7.50am. We quickly flew down there hoping to re-loacte the bird but sadly we were out of luck. Pophills had the striking nice Shelduck chicks and the LRP's whilst the Cetti's Warbler was calling from the bunds. A Redshank past over us on the main pit and a Turtle Dove flew past us as we headed towards the farm. Four pairs of LRP's were recorded and as we turned back to Pophills a immature Peregrine was looking for an early lunch over the main pit. Two Raven were calling from the top fields whilst when we returned to Pophills we picked up a Yellow Wagtail and another Turtle Dove. Not a bad morning but the day was just beginning.
I headed home for lunch before a quick visit to Upton Warren for the Black Tern. I then spent the afternoon watching my eldest play cricket at Feckenham. Imagine my surprise when Brian Stretch kindly called to advise a Pectoral Sandpiper has been reported between Dunnington and Broom, could it be on your patch ? I instantly knew this was at Pophills so broke the sound barrier to fly back down to the pits. On arrival no one was there despite it being reported on Rare Bird Alert. At first glance, nothing ! Surely I hadn't missed this rare American wader. As Matt Wilmott arrived three LRP'd took flight from the shoreline below us but tucked away and with them was the Pectoral Sandpiper. Landing on the north shoreline the bird allowed us some great views. We scrambled to let the local contacts know the bird was still present and we were then joined by Paul Hands (who had jumped out of bath to see the bird).
The bird was a stonking and you could clearly see conspicuous white stripes and the longer primary than birds such as Dunlin. We were all ecstatic to say the very least.
After a bit of investigation I found out Mike Inskipp had found the bird and just stopped en-route to the Broom Tavern for a lunch time drink. He estimated it was around 1pm giving us an estimated time between 11am and 1pm that the bird must have come down in the rain.
I didn't return home until after 8.30pm, not a bad day though ! It was even better when I added the bird to my Patchwork Challenge spreadsheet - 3 points !
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