Willen Lake yesterday

With a text from Martin late afternoon yesterday of an Avocet at Willen. I made a detour on the way to Niks. Arriving at the same time as Rob, we started scanning the island from the sewage treatment works car park. Even at that range and with bins the Avocet was easily picked out feeding near a Grey Heron, along the side of the island. Alas other reports had had the bird feeding outside the hide - which was lucky as we'd not have seen it from the STW car park. I then thought about trying to find the Redshanks reported earlier. With bins, I spotted a small wader and thought that looked promising. Rob by now had set his scope up and advised it was a Ringed Plover. So I got my scope out (with a 60x zoom) and positioned myself on the side of Robs van (not enough time to get my tripod out) and used his roof as a tripod. With this view it defo looked like a Ringed Plover. But as mentioned on Robs blog http://birdingnorthbucksandbeyondblogspot.blogspot.com/ and later reports on the NBBR http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/NBBR/ stated it was a Little Ringed Plover. So I'll have to see both now to be sure of a proper 'year tick'.