The Rossall Sanderling.

 Sanderling. Geoff Gradwell.

An excellent in flight shot of the Sanderling at Rossall Point. I don't recall ever seeing one as good as this image of a Sanderling in flight.

There are lots of birding bonuses, and I had one on Sunday 26 May at Rossall Point, Fleetwood, when I found one of my most favourite of waders the Sanderling bearing rings. But there's a challenge following a find like this, in that attempting to get an accurate reading from birds with rings is often impossible, usually because of the distance between you and the bird, but Sundays Sanderling was an easy one. 

Sanderling. Geoff Gradwell.

My bird wasn't quite as close as this one of which GG got an excellent shot, but once I got my binoculars onto it it was a pretty straight forward task to get the legs and sequence correct.

I duly got in touch with two contacts Chris over here, and Jeroen in The Netherlands - both of which co-operated and helped me with flying colours - and within 24 hours of the find I had recieved the history of this wonderful little creature which had been ringed - by an amazing coincidence - one day short on the day I found the bird exactly two years ago on 27 May 2011 at Sandgeroi in Iceland.

From the date of its first ringing this Sanderling was sighted on three occasions in 2011 at the same location of Sandgeroi, and twice in 2012 there, the last sighting on 19 May being a little over a year before I found this bird again on the beach at Rossall Point on Sunday 26 May 2013.

All this leaves you to wonder just how many miles this bird will have flown between its first ringing May 2011 in Iceland, to the find two years later May 2013 in Fleetwood, England.

Juvenile Sanderling. Jeroen Reneerkens.

Thanks to Jeroen at www.waderstudygroup.org for the image above, and to Geoff Gradwell for his two excellent images of the Sanderling.