Missing out on Little Stint. Twice!

Just a fairly short post today.

Dale and I headed out around the estuary to do the WeBS count on the rising tide. We focused most of our attention on Flow Point as the high tide flooded the Passage House roost. There were 339 Oystercatchers, 89+ Curlew, 2 Whimbrel, c20 Ringed Plover, c30 Sandwich Terns, four Redshank and 2 Wheatears. Five Teal (all female types) were a nice surprise at Passage House, where there was also four Common Sandpipers and a Kingfisher. We managed to get a good Little Egret count of 66. 40 or 50 were roosting in the trees by Passage House. A very impressive sight!

Anyway, we didn't see any Dunlin on the count. I expect they were roosting on the estuary wall out of range of our scopes. Well that turned out to be pretty annoying because later Will saw on birdguides that a Little Stint had been seen around lunchtime (found by Tom Whiley) with the Dunlin! So we rush out and soon found the group of 20 Dunlin (with the Ringed Plover and a Turnstone) feeding in front of Flow Point but there was no Little Stint to be seen! Birding can be very cruel!