I’d been idly/anxiously watching the progress of the White-tailed Plover up at Caelaverock (on the Scottish side of the Solway) in the last few days. It was the first twitchable bird for 30 years, so I thought it might be worth a trip up there, but I didn’t have any time. Imagine my astonishment then, when I received (while clearing up for the Haffner Open Garden) a text via RBA’s SMS service saying that the damn thing had just turned up on the Eric Morecambe pools. This was at 5:05 pm, and I had to help Ruth Self (a fellow player) take down all the signs we’d put up this morning along the road. As we were walking back to the car, I broached the subject of making “a little detour” to the EM pools, and she seemed happy enough when I explained the rarity of the bird (which I thought was pretty considerate ). So, stopping to take down the signs which were on our route from Linden Hall to Leighton, we got to the hide about 5:45, and I was relieved to find the bird still showing. I bloke very kindly let me look through his scope, as I was optic-less except for the crappy Minoltas we keep in the car (shame it was an opticron, but beggars can’t be choosers…). I had reasonably good views, and saw a wing-stretch, and took a vaguely identifiable shot with my phone through my benefactor’s scope! Ruth, who was interested enough to come with me to the hide, also got a look at it, so that’s another bizzare addition to a non-birder’s life list.

I took Ruth home, then went home myself to say hello to the ‘rents who’d just got back from their Scottish holiday. After having a bit to eat, and hanging around for a bit, I decided to go back with my camera and scope, despite the lack of sightings (it flew off at 6:30!). I watched for some time at the Crag Road viewpoint with some birders from Cheltenham and Huddersfield, but we had to make do with a Spoonbill as the WTP was nowhere to be seen. As a last-ditch attempt to see the bird properly, I went down the EM pool turnoff where 30 or so birders were hanging around, along with Jacqui from Leighton, who was acting as a marshal, complete with yellow jacket! Still no sign of the bloody thing: perhaps it’s nipped back up to Caerlaverock… I did, however, have nice views of a feeding Noctule bat (as identified by Jacqui) in the beautiful sunset.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.