UKH

Spotted redshank with redshank, little egret and by itself (a good ‘front on’ photo).  

Oystercatchers in some sort of courtship carry-on, and a moorhen that was drifting around on a piece of wood. 

Scarlet elf cup. 

I suspect that if ingested, that wouldn't be at all good for your elf.

The 2 Redshanks, the difference in colour (on my phone - I'll look on a big screen later) doesn't feel as large as when we were actually looking at them. I'm wondering whether that's a photo/processing thing or a screen fidelity thing or a brain "enhancement" thing.

The straight on photo of the SR is great, like an unstoppable ship coming at you.

Agree on the colour. In reality spot reds are quite ‘stand out’ silver and white compared to normal reds. 

A good couple of hours at the Nene Washes yesterday. Lots of widgeon, coot, mallard, mute swan, goldfinch, red kite, kestrel, buzzard, a short view of one of the common cranes and roe deer, but highlights were two short eared owls sitting in a hedge. 

If it wasn't for the help of a bloke who kindly pointed them out I would have missed them.

Dave 

Short eared owls are cracking birds. Saw a couple last year, great views as well. One of the highlights on Sunday, which Michael H observed, was huuuge numbers of geese that got spooked by a plane. Took some photos, thousands of them, a guess being well over 10 thousand. 

The pink footed goose population currently on the Ribble Marshes has been estimated at between 50,000 and 70,000 !!!!!! 

Humpack breaching off Porthleven. About half a mile away so a bit grainy. 

Wow!  When was that? I’d heard about humpbacks on the south coast. More and more are being spotted through the UK.  Not by me though, yet….

Sunday just gone  

Nice; useful to have them side by side. Think though I need to see more spotted ones (only seen one!) to be more confident of ID.

Having seen on 2 occasions recently I'm starting to feel more confident. Apart from the general look and behaviour being slightly different (and it's easy to convince yourself wrongly on those), I feel the most distinctive "tell" is...

• the well defined black stripe running from the bill through the eye with white stripe above

followed by...

• the longer thinner bill with a slight downturn at the end

Obviously these are winter plumage, in summer there will be no difficulty if you're lucky enough to see a SR in summer plumage (I haven't been lucky in that respect).

The other thing to remember (and of course I'm generalising here), chances of a SR being around just because common Redshank are around - low, chances of common Redshank being around when a SR is around - high.

So if it really is a SR, chances are there'll be a common Redshank somewhere around that you can compare it with. If you've got decent views of both and the (relatively small) differences aren't obvious then chances are it's not a SR.

Edit: forgot, if all else fails make it fly away 👎 - white wing bar means common Redshank

Yes, agree with the two “tell” bullet points. Another reminder for me to slow down scanning, and a reminder of what I saw with the one I did see and probably forgot! Just need to reinforce the features in my brain!

The edit made me laugh! I was at Musselburgh Lagoons the other day and trying to carefully scan the Redshanks for a spotted one just in (the remote) case one was about. During that time the Redshank were giving some impressive flying displays for whatever reasons they were taking to the air frequently. Unlikely to be human interference though with the hides and banking surrounds.

Widgeon there in numbers were a bit nervous too so could have been some predator about.