I picked up a Hobby hawking over the trees on the southern bank and watched it through my scope. Suddenly it moved swiftly NE over the lake and then plummeted towards the surface of the lake. It pulled up inches from hitting the water and there were some obvious water splashes. I was now looking at a small wader sitting on the lake. I immediately exclaimed "phalarope!" to Richard who was standing next to me, as the profile of the bird looked good for RN Phalarope, but I couldn't see any plumage detail, as it was right over on the eastern side of the lake. Then stupidly, in hindsight, rather than staying to watch the bird and confirm further detail and ID, I raced off around the lake to the far side to try and get closer views from there. Unbelievably in the 2 minutes it took to get there, the bird had disappeared - I was so annoyed with myself! There is a good chance that this was a phalarope - my only concern is that it might have been a Common Sand unceremoniously dumped into the lake by the diving Hobby, though I haven't seen a Common Sand here for a couple of weeks and there was no sign of one today. With an alert posture, this might show a longish neck - the bill looked long, straight and slender, more so than Common Sand, but was it really? The head seemed to show a high, steep forehead above the bill, but how accurate was this? - I didn't watch it long enough to confirm and my mental image is now slightly blurred - what a schoolboy error and a frustrating experience - you should never stop watching a bird before confirming an ID 100%!
Checking out some of the adjacent lakes, I came across no birds of note, but found some nice spikes of Bee Orchid and a single Southern Marsh Orchid, which was going over.
And here is yesterday's Scarlet Tiger that appeared mysteriously in my car
How annoying is that, I have an old but kind of similar story. On 14th Oct 1984 I was with the boys at Titchwell and in the distance I got onto a pale grey and white wader, with slender longish neck, thin, longish bill and as it was frantically running in and out the shallows, could see it's yellow legs. Various other waders nerby, I could see it was smaller than Redhshank and I went quiet as I began unscrewing the 15X fixed magnification lens to swap it for my 40X, but to my utter frustration, when I looked thru the new lens, the bird vanished. Having seen one at Staines 21st Sept 1983, I believe it was a Wilson's Phalarope to this day.
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