The Little Things In Life...

Little ringed plover, The Flood

Managed to find an hour to get out today and go in search of Guy's little ringed plover from yesterday.
Cycling through the busy industrial estate I kept an eye out for a certain red-tailed bird but unsurprisingly I didn't spot it.
Freeman's Pools were fairly quiet with just the usual mute swan, mallard, teal, coot, moorhen, gadwall and tufted duck present.
There were good numbers of meadow pipit and curlew feeding in the Frog Pond field but the regular flock of wigeon were notable only by their absence.
At the Wildowlers' Pools it was business as usual: little egret, grey heron, teal, moorhen, little grebe, and so on. The 'resident' female goosander is still hanging around and the green sandpiper made its presence known by flying noisily off the pools and heading toward the Flood.
The Flood was conspicuously quiet with none of redshank, dunlin, lapwing, teal or black-headed gulls so often seen there of late. Not even a single moorhen, mallard or shelduck was to be seen. Even the pied wagtails had all but disappeared with just a pair of birds searching for food along the water's edge.

Little ringed plover, Aldcliffe

This wasn't looking too promising... then I noticed a lone wader, picking around in the mud toward the back of the Flood. Bingo!
I managed to get a couple of pretty shoddy pics of the little ringed plover by holding my compact camera up to my 'scope eyepiece, but you can clearly see all the defining features.
So, that's the first 'real' spring migrant to grace the parish this year - what will be next? Sand martin, wheatear, chiffchaff?
Jon