Went to see it today. I'm fairly sure it's just a normal golden plover (mantle too finely specled with golden colouration). No disrespect to Andy Musgrove who found it - it's a funny looking bird and in anycase, he (and John Marchant) reidentified it as an EGP.
Yes, quite an interesting day yesterday. After a leisurely start, I took the dog for a walk around the village and stumbled across a Pluvialis plover in a sugar beet field. Bit surprising for late May. Through bins it looked grey and long-winged so I legged it home and soon returned with scope and books. After a long look and a long phone chats with various folk I put the news out as a possible American Goldie, with a request for backup. Early views of some other observers also tended towards AGP, but we couldn't get the underwing and soon views got rather distant. Eventually, John Marchant felt it was a Eurasian GP on structure, albeit a colour he'd never seen before. Seeing as John wrote the book, I'm happy to listen to his opinion!
I returned alone at dusk and "encouraged" the bird to fly a few times, but it flew low each time and it was difficult to see the underwing. On balance, I think it was more white than grey. More importantly, however, the flight call was rather monosyllabic. So I think it is a Eurasian, but a very odd one.
I don't think the small amount of golden spangling on the upperparts is a problem Ilya - this would be expected for AGP (obviously, EGP and PGP are more consistently golden and less cold black/grey/white). The overall colouration of the bird is strikingly cold. The main problem (aside from the hidden underwing) was the difficulty in assessing the wing formula. To identify the different goldies, it is important to look at the relative position of the tips of primaries, tertials and tail. However, this was clearly a first-summer bird which had dropped several tertials and whose primaries were extremely worn, which made it very hard to clarify the wing formula.
Anyway, the bird was still present in the same field Sunday morning. Leaving Shotesham on Roger's Lane towards Saxlingham Nethergate, the bird has been in the first cereal field (beet I think) on the left, about 500m from the village. It seems to favour the south-west end of the field. Please view from the road (park sensibly in the layby) or from the public footpath on the west side of the field.
I've got some poor photos but a visiting friend has finally taught me how to use my camera correctly for digiscoping, so I'll try to get some better ones a) if it stays and b) if it stops raining.
Cheers
Andy Musgrove
