Green Sandpipers

I'm lucky enough to live overlooking a field with a pond in it that attracts small numbers of wildfowl and waders every year as it fills up during the winter. This years exceptionally wet spring meant the pond has been fuller than usual and is still visible! Normally by this time of year you can't see the water as its virtually dried up and the vegetation hides the rest. The receding water has left a nice muddy margin that's attracted a few waders - Common Sandpiper, Oystercatcher, Black-tailed Godwit, Snipe and green Sandpiper. One of my favourite waders.

Green Sandpipers are generally scarce here with perhaps 1 record per year since we moved here in 2016. However, this year has been exceptional in that we've had a spring record and a late summer bird that's stayed for almost two months and has occasionally been joined by a second bird.

 

I've a soft spot for Green Sandpipers since I was a kid learning my birding craft in Suffolk. I saw my first one fly up, calling,  from field-side ditch one late summer. It took me awhile to work out what its was, by a process of elimination,  as I'd never seen one before! After that initial sighting they became a regular feature of my late summer walks round the fields near our house as they flushed from ditches.