Muddy little ringos

Not often nowadays that I need to put anything on the blog, nothing exciting appears to be happening. Today things changed for the better with Bob nailing the first returning Lesser Whitethroat in the SSSI, though Tim thinks it might have been there yesterday, quickly followed by Sean K reporting a Common Whitethroat in the Old Sewage Works.  I chipped in with a stunning male Redstart in the remaining scrub east of Alex, which showed briefly then not at all.  Always the same with the first bird, always a bit of an arse.

A good day to clear up a few migrants then, which I duly did–first in the OSW, which took me into the park–Heronry has been drying out for months and the exposed mud has looked for waders, but this is the park of low expectations so I nearly missed the Little Ringed Plover,  surprised to find a second, and frankly gob-smacked to find a third.

Rare spring passage migrant, occasionally seen on the banks of Alexandra Lake in March or April. The most recent records were on April 1st 2013, on Police Scrape, of a female that stayed for almost a week, and of 2 birds over Long Wood on 12th May that year. 2 juvenile birds reported on the 29th June, 2015 flushed from the shore of Alex