As I was walking through Shapwic Heath NNR on 20th April looking for pretty much any birds to photograph, I saw quite a gathering of birders looking at a small wader on the far side of Meare Heath drained lagoon.  At the time it was walking in front of the black-tailed godwit flock currently sporting beautiful summer plumage and it was hard to see.  Significantly smaller than the godwits, one observer commented that it could probably have walked between their legs.  After a few minutes it emerged in the clear and I rattled off a few shots of what I was told was a wood sandpiper.

I had a most enjoyable morning at Slimbridge WWT reserve in the company of Gary Critchlow, a photographer from Loughborough.  On my last two visits it was like a massive building site so I was pleased to see that most of the work seems to have finished.  There are more walkways over water and most of the water is remarkably clean considering the concentration of captive (and visiting wild) birds.  The light was pretty good most of the time for photography and as ever there were lots of obliging subjects.

I spent a very pleasant 90 minutes behind one of the screen hides at Walton Heath taking advantage of the last of the warm afternoon sunshine.  Although there were few water birds about, (just a few tufties, pochard and a pair of little grebe), there was a good mixed flock of hirundines.  Sand martins were by far the most numerous but I also saw a single swallow and a couple of house martins.  These seemed to be feeding on something on the water surface so I assume there was a hatch of an insect going on.  I was interested to see that the sand martins sometimes seemed to go right under the water in the excitement of the chase.