Sunset sand

By this morning Storm Bert had largely worked itself out, leaving a blustery but largely fine day, and after a weekend of enforced inactivity I was raging to be out and about. There were no bird alerts for Farmoor, but I decided to take a trip over there anyway, knowing that I'd get a 10,000 step walk and there'd definitely be some kind of bird life to photograph. It was unfortunate that a typical Farmoor storm blew in at almost the same moment as I did, necessitating a half-hour hiatus in the café, but someone has to drink the coffee and eat the cake and today, it turned out, that was me.

I was about three quarters of the way round Farmoor Two and the light was fading fast when I spotted a small wader working the reservoir edge, but it wasn't keen on being approached, and this was as near as I managed to get to it before it swooped across to a quieter section of bank. My wader identification skills are only slightly above Key Stage Two level, so "sandpiper" was as close as I could get out in the field, but my best guess was that it was probably a Common Sandpiper, and once I got back home and viewed the photos on a decent screen, it turned out that I'd guessed right.

For scale, the Common Sandpiper is smaller than a Starling, though it has longer legs. The contrasting brown upperparts and white breast, white eye ring, grey bill, and olive green legs are typical, though in breeding plumage the barring on the back is less obvious and there's also a well-marked eye stripe. It tends to stand and feed in quite a crouched position, and walks with a distinctive bobbing motion known as teetering. In the UK it's primarily a summer migrant, with adults arriving around April, and leaving again in about September for their wintering grounds around the Mediterranean and North Africa. The RSPB estimates that about 15,000 pairs breed here, mainly in upland areas of Scotland, northern England and Wales. A few dozen birds do stay here through the winter, but it's unusual to see one so late in the year. However juveniles are said to migrate later than their parents, so I think this is probably a first winter passage migrant.