Dream On!

I watched this small group of Turnstone at Cockersand, as one of the most appropriately named birds, scurrying across the shingle turning stones in search for food as they went.

 

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Not recorded in this short video, I observed them as they took to flight a couple of times, and heard them call. A first for me, as I've never been so close to Turnstones before to be able to hear the call as clear as this....

If I'm honest the visit to Cockersand was planned to have been a thorough and pleasant  one, a search with the hope of finding a Snow Bunting on Plover Scar, but saw 10 Knot with 250 Oystercatcher. I was also hoping to find a winter Stonechat here, they usually are. Two Rock Pipit were on the marsh edge as the tide receded, a lone Greenfinch seen, with others heard in the Bank Houses area, a female Shoveler was in the large ditch running through the field at the Moss/Slack Lane junction where 12 Meadow Pipit were flighty.

Otherwise the visit to Cockersand soon went downhill for me, it was thwarted not least because of the cold howler in my face and I had to beat a retreat called back to Lancaster. Unfortunate, as the fields were alive with a few thousand waders which would have kept me interested and occupied for some time, including the recently seen at least 3,000 Golden Plover and 650 Curlew, with large numbers of Redshank, Dunlin, and Lapwing. 

Who knows, I could have missed an American Golden Plover with the 'Europeans', a White-rumped Sandpiper with the Dunlin, or even a Ruff with the Redshank....Dream on!

Thanks to Ian Mitchell for the header image, a fraction of the 3,000 Golden Plover currently resident at Cockersand.