World Shorebird Day – Our Story

As mentioned in a previous post Saturday the 6th September was the first World Shorebirds Day, and as a family (well Toby and I) we decided to get involved by counting shorebird numbers (or waders as I’d call them) on Manor Farm wader scrapes, and we had some nice birds and good numbers (all submitted to the team), and more importantly hopefully we went some way to raising awareness about these great creatures. Anyway this post is a brief run down of what we saw over the three recording days (Fridya 5th, Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th September 2014).

Friday, Toby and I had planned a long walk and we used the time around manor farm to count the waders we saw and they were there in good numbers:

3 Ruff

1 Greenshank

2 Common Snipe

4 Green Sandpiper

1 Little Ringed Plover

581 Lapwing

So a grand total of 592 shorebirds (waders) well worth the effort and hopefully helpped out by submitting our results.

On Saturday Toby and I popped over for an evening check of the scrapes to see what waders we could find and again the results were OK (although not many lapwing!):

5 Lapwing

2 Ringed Plover

1 Little Ringed Plover

1 Common Sandpiper

4 Green Sandpiper

3 Ruff

1 Common Snipe

More Species but less birds, another interesting one.

Sunday was the only day it was just me, I popped out late in the evening and was there just before dusk to witness the shorebirds, and these were my results:

1 Lapwing

2 Ringed Plover

1 Little Ringed Plover

6 Common Sandpiper

4 Green Sandpiper

1 Greenshank

1 Ruff

Also 1 GREAT WHITE EGRET! No not a shorebird but brilliant for me.

The total number of species was 8, with best numbers on the Friday (although that was the only day time visit), and what it did show was that numbers fluctuated or more likely the birds are harder to see on some days (something I already knew).