Long Billed Dowitcher at Pennington Marshes

Long Billed Dowitcher.

I walked along the sea wall towards Keyhaven Lagoon where the Dowitcher had been seen most of the previous day , i checked out all the waders as i went and saw several Turnstone , Dunlin , Redshank & Grey Plovers ,a flock of 20+ Lapwing flew over me and then i reached Keyhaven Lagoon.

Mixed flock of waders.

I checked through the waders on the lagoon but could not see the Long Billed Dowitcher , the tide was out so i would probably have to wait for the tide to come in before i could see it , there were at least 10 Spotted Redshanks and several Greenshanks plus a couple of hundred Wigeon out on the lagoon .

4 Greenshank & 1 Spotted Redshank.

I met another birder there who had missed the Dowitcher by 10 mins yesterday and when he came back he missed it again , so sounds as if this bird could give me the run around today , anyhow i decided to go and check out the waders on the saltmarsh again just in case i had overlooked the Dowitcher. , well after a while of checking through the waders without success i decided to head back to the lagoon as the tide was beginning to turn.

I bumped into the birder i saw earlier and we had a little chat , he said he had no luck and i would probably see it now he had to go ...

Sleeping Long Billed Dowitcher

Well i returned to the lagoon and i instantly noticed a small wader in front of one of the muddy islands out in the middle of the lagoon , set me scope up and there it was , a sleeping Long Billed Dowitcher.

Broad supercilium & long billed.

Long Billed Dowitcher.

With Grey Plovers .

Having a stretch.

I watched this bird for quite sometime , this was a welcome year tick for me . Other birds of note were plenty of Siskins overhead plus i heard and saw a single Redpoll on my previous visit.

Lesser Redpoll

Lesser Redpoll with Linnets.