Middleton Lakes RSPB - Sat 2 Aug

A trip "Up North" today to twitch a pretty rare bird! Up soon after 4:00am and on the road within the hour, myself and two friends arrived at Middleton Lakes RPSB reserve in Staffordshire at around 7:40am. Luckily we bumped in to a local chap who pointed us in the right direction and by 8:00am we had seen our target bird, albeit in flight only...a summer-plumaged Pacific Golden Plover!
After about an hour of waiting for the bird to emerge from vegetation it did another fly-around and then settled for the remainder of our stay, affording brilliant views and enabling me to pick out all the characteristic plumage features. A brilliant bird and well worth the trip.

 

 

 

Whilst on site I also saw a couple of Snipe and two Common Sandpipers. At least two juvenile Little Ringed Plover were also present and there were good numbers of Common Terns, including several recently fledged birds. A Grasshopper Warbler was briefly heard a few times. After a couple of hours on site we headed back home and got caught in holiday traffic on the M5, so a bit of cross-country driving got us back home by early afternoon after a very successful twitch.