27/08/2022 Recar, Cleveland

Greater Sand Plover: Taking a break from watching dragonflies, I decided to head out early and twitch the greater sand plover at Redcar. I

 had a wedding to shoot in Doncaster so thought I'd spend the morning a little further north.  Also having only seen one before, the Spurn bird back in 2018. These birds breed in the semi-deserts of Turkey and eastwards through central Asia so when one turns up on the British shores its a big deal. 

When I arrived there were already a large crowed gathered along the beach watching the bird. The bird was feeding along the tide line and even picking at the washed up kelp. 

Compared to its native cousins the ringed plover the greater sand plover has a thick-bill, long-legs and papers to be chunkier in appearance. They also posses grey backs and white underparts. The breast, forehead and nape are chestnut, and there they have a distictive black eye mask. 

15/07/2018 Spurn, East Yorkshire

Greater Sand Plover: On Saturday late afternoon my phone pings and a message pops up 'greater sand plover, Spurn' unfortunately I was working hard laying my new garden patio and was knacked and couldn't face the journey up.

I was even tired come Sunday morning and didn't set off until gone 9am, and typically when you leave late for a rare bird it tends to disappear. which this did, by around 8.30am the bird had been relocated and flew off with the message saying up high around 20miles north.


Needless to say I was gutted.

Dawn and I decided to chance it and continue our journey with a stop off in Hull town centre for some shopping and food. And just as we got back in to the car to head off home I saw another message pop up saying that the bird was back!


Needless to say I was thrilled, and we shot off down the Spurn.

The bird gave us an excellent show as it fed along the beach with a pair of ringed plover, too distanct for my lens but great in the scope were I manged some scope-shots.

I think we got lucky overall, as not only did the bird come back, but it seemed o be allot closer, in better light and less heat haze.

According to the excellent Andy Roadhouse  'The Birds of Spurn' book  this is the 3rd GSP for Spurn.