counting coots

Don't get too excited, it's not a patch first in the way that a Caspian Gull might be, more of a movement into new territory by a vagrant species. While watching gulls on the Thames yesterday lunchtime (who, me?) I also found a couple of Common Sandpipers. Waders = Good.

Now it seems to me that waders generally have two main types of flight. There is the normal 'I am going from A to B, in the air, and I will flap my wings regularly to get there' type flight and then there is the 'Whoooaaaa shiiiiit' erratic flight that they do when close to feeding and resting areas. Common Sandpipers, of course, also have the 'I'm pretending to be cold and just about to fall into the water just below me' type flight. Which is what they were doing over the Thames yesterday.

It was while watching them do this, that I saw them fly into the Wandle Basin AND LAND! This, dear reader, is the first. Despite all the mud and coots in the low tide wandle basin, it is distinctly unpopular with waders. Until yesterday. Waders actually on the river Wandle. See - it's not just about Gulls and coots here.

The apposite thing here would be to give you a picture of a Common Sandpiper flying up the Wandle. Unfortunately at that distance they were little more than jizzblobs, so that is out of the Question.

Instead of that, if I leave a picture from the Counting Coots library of 'not sure what that is for' images of the area that they were in, you can then imagine them flying over the mud and into the distance yourself.