A Day in Holme Pierrepont, Nottinghamshire - Part 1

I'm not really sure how the area known as Holme Pierrepont got its rather exotic name but it's home to the National Watersports Centre where many of our elite rowers, canoeists and kayakers train for sporting events on the water.  Funnily enough, Olympic silver medalist Paul Radcliffe, the current Director of the Centre is from Tyldesley where I live and went to our local high school where my wife Sarah briefly worked with his mum in the Science department.  Small world eh?

But it wasn't watersports that brought me two and half hours down the motorway here away from Tyldesley, it was a little bird and in fact another lifer - a Spotted Sandpiper.  The Spotted Sandpiper is a winter vagrant to the UK which breeds in North America and which gets its name from its spotted breeding plumage.  Apparently there has been one breeding attempt recorded in Scotland where three eggs were laid but didn't hatch.

Armed with some excellent instructions from Paul Coombes, a Facebook buddy of mine and one who I actually met when he took me to see the Nightjars near Budby in Sherwood Forest, I arrived at the white-water canoe slalom course without any difficulty. Finding the bird however, was a little harder.

It had been most often seen between two of the bridges over the slalom course and on reaching the first bridge I met a nice young couple who had been looking for it without success. We decided to walk down to the second bridge on opposite sides of the narrow water channel looking on the grassy banks bordering the water, with the promise of waving to each other if any of us saw it.

At the second bridge I met up with three more birders, none of whom had seen it today. So we went off in different directions to scan the area.  Having had no luck myself, I decided to return to the second bridge and, as soon as I arrived, one of the young birders came running to me to tell me it had been found upstream. Great stuff,  much appreciated! It's always good to have a few pairs of eyes.

The bird was on the concrete edge of the slalom course looking for food. We viewed it from the bridge for a while, but as it didn't seem unduly bothered by a dog-walker and some other passers-by, we decided we could get closer.  Walking a long circle away from and around the bird, I joined up with a second photographer who was on the edge of water course about twelve metres form the subject.

It was quite active and soon flew up onto the grassy bank for a short while, before crossing the water to the bank on the other side.  We decided to let it settle and viewed it from afar for 10 minutes or so, giving another pair of birders with a scope and binoculars time to have a good look at it.  When they left we decided to get a bit nearer - we stayed low on the edge of the water and got down to around about 20 metres away from the bird.  It wasn't at all bothered by us and was happily looking for food in the grass.

And then the best moment came, it caught a long worm.  After playing with it for a couple of minutes it took the worm down to the water and washed it, before eventually managing to swallow it.  After this it went up the grassy bank slope again and we left it in peace to digest its meal.

Common Sandpipers and a Spotted Sandpipers are very similar, especially in winter plumage. The main differences seen in my photos of the Spotted Sandpiper are the yellow leg colour and the shorter tail projection. This bird is obviously in its winter plumage, so perhaps not quite as attractive as when in its spotted breeding plumage but it was still a very nice looking bird.