Least Sandpiper 13th August 1988
On August 13th 1988 I had birded the reserve from 5.15am until 11.15am. I was quite pleased with my tally, which included wood sand, 5 greenshank, Med Gull and yellow wags (not rare in those days). The weather was sunny at first with a SW wind and clouding over as I left.
However that feeling of a ‘nice mornings birding’ was somewhat overshadowed by the following sequence of events.
I remember getting a phone call from SC about 1pmish to say that someone had got a little stint at the flashes and he was going to check it out. Within the hour SMW phoned to say he thought it was a least sand:eek!:. I had been to Texas the previous year where I saw 100's and he said can I confirm it before we get the news out (remember no mobiles in those days and the nearest phone was half a mile away). A few minutes later, I had arrived on site and views through my bins revealed this was not a little stint and within a short time we were about to embark on the most historic ornithological event on the reserve.
Within an hour many of the ‘top local boys’ had arrived. But this wasn’t anything like these days, when there would be a 100 people within an hour. Throughout that first day possibly 60 or so arrived before dark. Being a Saturday and in the peak migration period many birders would have been doing their patch or gone to Norfolk or the likes. The bird spent most of the time on the 1st Flash shingle island, where it ‘crawled’ around in a very slow deliberate manner.
However by the following day (Sunday) the news had certainly got around. I arrived at 4.30am to find the Sailing pool car park almost full. People had slept overnight and were lurking about in the dark, perplexed. A group of birders said they had already looked around the pool, and were mystified by the lack of suitable habitat and wondered if they had come to the right place. Rather dismayed and concerned, “what do you mean, you’ve already been looking for it, its still dark I exclaimed!!!!” However, after my sharp riposte, I realised that they had been looking around the sailing pool 8-P
I told everyone gathered, which was quite a sizeable crowd by 5am, that we were going to keep everyone in the car park until the FLASHES was checked out and no one would be allowed onto the reserve until we knew if the bird was present and there was also going to be a charge of £1 per person. We eagerly raced to the Flashes the other birder I think was Stuart Croft, after a few anxious moments, YES it was still there. Unfortunately it was feeding in a small bay in the first Flash, which meant viewing from the side of the hide. (For those that don’t know in those days the main Flashes hide, stood 20 yards in front of today’s hide was a third the size, with steps only 5 foot high, thus not too much in the way of elevation.) This meant that no more than 5 people would be able to view the bird at a time. I ran up to the steps and waved to the other wardens in the car park ‘let the show begin’. The baying crowd made a mad dash to the hide, almost like a January sale at Debenhams. The £1’s came flowing in and everyone was happy with the 5 minutes we allowed them, as the bird performed well. The rota continued smoothly, with some happy enough go on their way, whilst others joined the queue for ‘second’s.’ The bird was almost glued to the spot for the first few hours. This enabled everyone to have plenty of views and couple of hundred birders were all happy. However something spooked the bird and it decided to hide out of site. Dilemma… we couldn’t move people out of the hide until they had seen the bird and coupled with a growing crowd of late risers, we had a problem. Whoops all of a sudden ..mayhem!! instead of an hour waiting time it became 4 hours. Thinking the bird had gone the mood changed and people became frustrated not knowing whether to leave or hang about. Thankfully normal service was resumed when after an hour or so the bird reappeared. The crowd became jovial and acceptance of the situation and we were grateful for their patience. By 8pm the last of the ‘twitchers’ had left and once again we regained our reserve.
Apart from one awkward birder everyone was very grateful to us for our assistance and organisation and to top it we had raised an amazing £750 or more. A minimum of 1,000 people saw the bird that day. Today I would think that amount of people would appear in the first day and the money raised would be several times that amount.
The following day the bird performed well until the late evening, when it flew off to the south bringing an end to this once in a lifetime event….well hopefully more of a once in a 23 year event.
I may have missed out a few details but I'm sure SC MIW and some of the other Lads will add there bits.
2 (crap)pics of the bird
B
John