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Drop everything there's a White - tailed Lapwing up North!

White-tailed Lapwing



I’ve said it before and I will definitely say it again, repeating yourself is an age thing you know, I said repeating yourself is an age thing you know, the great thing about my hobby is that you have no idea what the next day will bring. Yesterday was a case in point.

 


I had a straightforward, but none the less very pleasant, day planned. Up at 06:30, breakfast then do the horses and go for a countryside walk with Folly and my bins. A cup of coffee with my lovely wife and then a telephone consultancy call with some private equity investors in Australia at 10 am. Then an afternoon doing jobs outside interspersed with some training sessions with Loki.

 

Well I got as far as the coffee when a message from my great birding buddy Nick alerted me to the presence of a mega rare White-tailed Lapwing in Yorkshire. My every suffering wife asked if I would have enough time to go after my phone call, well is the pope catholic I asked myself!

 

As it turned out the phone call was shorter than planned as the investors had one question about timescale to market for a technology they were interested in investing in which was easy to answer and I was in the car and departing by 10:40.

 

The Lapwing was located at the Blacktoft RSPB reserve on the bank of the Humber River just into Yorkshire some 150 miles and 2.5 hours of shat (sic) nav time from home. This would be my first visit to Blacktoft, a tidal and mainly reedbed reserve with a number of hides set out along the river. It was a rather boring mainly motorway drive from home and, after the traditional  lightning stop to pick up coffee and a sandwich lunch, I arrived at the reserve at 13:30. The very helpful volunteers seemed to be well drilled in planning a major twitch and a high vis volunteer in the road showed me to a parking spot. A short walk past the visitors centre took me to the Townend hide which was manned by yet more helpful volunteers who checked there was space available for me in the large but busy hide. Not knowing what to expect in terms of viewing at Blacktoft, I half expected the plover to be giving distant scope views on a mud flat. How wrong was I as there it was obvious to the naked eye slap bang in front of the hide!

 

The White-tailed Lapwing is rated as a three star mega rarity on the birders Richter scale, equating to at most one record a decade, with just 6 records on the BBRC database to the end of 2019. The first ever UK record was as recent as 1975. It breeds on inland marshes in Iran, Iraq  and southern Russia . The Iraqi and Iranian breeders are mainly residents, but Russian birds migrate  south in winter to the Indian Subcontinent, the middle east and northeast Africa.  So it is fair to say that the Blacktoft bird is well and truly lost!

 

It was a stunning looking mainly sandy coloured  bird with remarkable long bright yellow legs. It was busy feeding on the sticky black tidal mud amongst many other waders and totally oblivious to its recently gained celebrity status. Also on view were a good number of Godwits, Snipe and Ruff, an attractive looking Greenshank and two Green Sandpipers. After 30  immensely enjoyable minutes of watching and photographing the bird I left to give one of the growing queue of anxious birders outside a chance to see this birding gem. 

 






I then spent a leisurely few hours exploring the other hides around the rest of the reserve where the highlights were more Greenshank and Green Sandpipers and two juvenile Water Rails. At 16:00 I made my way back to the car passing the many arriving birders heading anxiously to the Townend hide. My already very happy and contented mood was further enhanced by listening to the test match on the way home – what a turnaround from the shambles of the second test!

 

 

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