Tibetan Sand Plover – Rimac, Lincolnshire, 14^th May 2002

On the night of the 11th May 2002, a Saturday, my ex- Gillian and I were out with our friends Graham Clark and Christine Reid in Edinburgh, taking advantage on the opportunity to do so as my Mum was visiting and therefore baby-sitting. Early on, on what proved to be a very long night of excessive eating, drinking and partying, news of Greater Sand Plover became news of a Lesser Sand Plover* on the MegaAlert..... .

(* Clearly, sand plovers were reinvented since this account was written way back when, and what was Lesser Sand Plover became Siberian Sand Plover and Tibetan Sand Plover - the bird in question here - in 2023).

There was no immediate response from either Graham or I as we couldn’t do anything about it there and then, and we were having a good time. And soon afterwards we were too pissed, and as a result not capable of even thinking about the following day, Sunday the 12th May. That day I couldn’t even get my act together to go to Aberlady Bay for Kentish Plover, a Scottish tick, let alone Rimac, in far-away Lincolnshire for Lesser Sand Plover.

So, on Monday the 13th May, as usual, I was back to work, flying down from Edinburgh to London Heathrow, on this occasion armed with binoculars.

On arrival at Bechtel I 'phoned Mike Thompson to investigate any remote possibility of going with him, but he explained that he had pre-empted the transformation of the bird from a Greater to a Lesser on the Saturday when he primed Pete Ewer about the Greater Sand Plover, and as such had twitched it successfully on Sunday with Pete and Angela.

The pressure was on, but my head still not clear enough to make any definitive plans, now due to a lack of sleep caused by a further curtailed night of sleep, this time caused by the girls and my early flight, rather than drink.

I did though place an e-mail request for a lift on the Surfbirds website and then with Rare Bird Alert. Later, at c.13.00 I received a message relating to my lift required on the pager. However, unfortunately the only response was from Graham telling me that he was now intending to travel from Edinburgh to Lincolnshire on Monday night on his way to Norfolk and then Hertfordshire before his next trip. Neither of us could think of a way of combining his trip south to Lincolnshire with mine north. I asked him to give me a report from the scene though.

I returned to my flat in St. Albans that evening to find a message on the answerphone from Mike offering use of his spare birding equipment. He urged me to put another request for a lift on the pager that night, but I still hadn't defined a strategy beyond taking my binoculars with me to work the following morning.

I had though researched train times and so I resolved that once I had news on the Tuesday morning, I would negotiate a ‘day pass’ and make my way to Cleethorpes by train, if nothing else offered itself.

As I left the flat that morning at 06:30 my mobile went off and I answered to find that it was my ‘reporter on the spot’ telling me he too had just seen it. The pressure was really on now as Graham had caught up with it, as well as Mike and Pete!

I continued on my way to work, contemplating opting out and going straight to Kings Cross and getting the first train to Cleethorpes. Almost, but not quite.... .

Still in a quandary, I reached work and resolved to confront the issue, even if it involved taking a day off. I broached the issue with Ian ?????? (the senior engineer with responsibility for the environmental cohort) first who basically said ‘go for it’ and then with Clifton Schindel (my direct line-manager, a very young American ‘boy’ environmental engineer with whom I often clashed) second. Given the lack of workload at the time, he too was reasonably positive, surprisingly so.

I put out another lift request on the pager, this time after 'phoning Andrew Raines at Rare Bird Alert, and whilst I waited for the resultant calls, investigated train times again.

However, then it dawned on me that Bechtel had a travel section on the ground floor and perhaps, given the logistics of getting a train / taxi and taxi train and the problematic lack of lifts offered, hiring a car was the way to go.

I quickly made my way there and explained my predicament to the main person in the office. He assigned one of his staff, Jo, to the case and although she had just arrived at work, we very quickly agreed that my best option would be to hire a small car from Europcar in Brentford on Bechtel rates, with the option of returning it to Luton Airport. Given the £55 train fare, the charges seemed reasonable and so I committed myself, and Jo confirmed the arrangements with Europcar.

After a quick change of clothes into what passed for birding gear amongst the meagre selection of non-office clothes I retained in my flat in St. Albans, I bade my colleagues at Bechtel goodbye. At c.09:10 I hailed a taxi to take me from Hammersmith Broadway to Gillette Corner on Great West Road, the A4 through Brentford. Lovely! The taxi driver and I found the Europcar offices with reasonable ease, and some 40 minutes before the arranged time of 10:00 I arrived at the Europcar offices to collect my Renault Clio.

This all went reasonably well, with the result that well before 10:00 I was on my way to Lincolnshire from West London.

The only drawback was that Europcar were unable to provide any sort of road map and so I navigated all the way there, using my geographers / birders intuition and a tiny road map in my diary.

I made good time and arrived some 3.5(?) hours after leaving West London. Unfortunately, as I made my way off the Lincolnshire Wolds towards the coast the pager announced that the Lesser Sand Plover had been lost.

This increased my velocity to new levels, despite me noticing the increased number of speed cameras abounding in rural Eastern England since I last drove there.

I arrived at the Rimac carpark, with its memories of a similar dash to see Alpine Accentor, and in less time than usual assembled my gear, as I had none. What I did have consisted of my bins, mobile ‘phone, pager and a pen and paper. Otherwise, I was totally ill-equipped, particularly given the imminent yomp across coastal Lincolnshire’s salt-marshes and mudflats.

As I walked out from the car-park towards the mudflats I asked an elderly couple coming the other way whether ‘it’ had been relocated. The answer was in the negative, and he explained that birders were fanning out across the flats looking for it.

As I got further out, I could see what he meant, because away in the distance to the south I could see 20 – 30 birders spread across the beach like tiny matchstick figures.

I made my way towards them, not particularly quickly, but as I did so it became apparent that the scattered wanderings were slowly beginning to coalesce at one point. That was enough for me, and so the pace of my walking increased. After 20 – 25 minutes I was with the crowd and able to pick the target out, just, with my binoculars. The assembled gallery was now c.30 strong and ranged in a loose curve around the wader flock at c.50 – 60 m range.

Considerations of light and wind direction came into it, but despite this I had plumped for a position centrally within the gallery, looking south and with a very strong cross-wind.

However, these were relatively minor considerations given that by chance I had positioned myself to a birder who was very generous with his ‘scope. I had been looking at the bird with my binoculars, finding it relatively easy to pick out, owing to its stance and relatively pale plumage, when he tapped me on my arm, and invited me to use his ‘scope.

He had obviously realised my predicament and as such exercised his Yorkshire generosity by offering me the frequent use of his ‘scope. And what a ‘scope it was! It was Kowa TSN fluorite ‘scope, which gave stunning clarity despite the difficult viewing conditions. It was so windy that soon after this arrangement commenced two adjacent ‘scopes and tripods blew over and fell into the estuarine sediments!

The bird was reasonably close, but due to the proximity of the ranged birders and the windy conditions, the accompanying Ringed Plovers and Dunlins were somewhat flighty. I was relatively easily able to follow the sand plovers’ movements with my bins, but embarrassingly it was sometimes a struggle identifying its’ companion species in terms of giving directions once the bird had moved. A prominent ‘breast-on’ Ringed Plover thus became a Lapwing as all the waders looked dark in the light conditions and size / scale was not immediately apparent.

Anyway, my directions to the sand plover in terms of it being ‘next to the Lapwing’ caused mutterings from to young lads next to me. Shortly afterwards, when I explained to my ‘scope companion that I was working on a Project in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, and as yet hadn’t seen the Caspian, let alone birds in that region such as Lesser Sand Plover, the murmurings started again, I assume because they made the assumption I was getting confused with Caspian Plover. The old birding aggression welled up, but fortunately I quelled it and concentrated on the bird.

The views through the ‘borrowed’ ‘scope got better and better, and as the bird moved around us, so the light got better and the sand plover got closer. By now we were working in tandem, my companion would use his ‘scope for a few minutes whilst I used my bins and attempted to sketch the bird, and then I would have a look at it through his ‘scope for a minute or so. After some 15 – 20 minutes of this, someone nearby called the ‘scope owner by name, and after a delayed reaction caused by lack of memory power and the photo-reactive glasses he was wearing I realised I knew him. It was Kris from Yorkshire who I had last met when I gave him a lift on North Uist when Graham and I had twitched the Long-tailed Shrike! He was mightily impressed that we should met up again like this and so the craich was even better, culminating in me being given a sausage butty shortly before they left! We exchanged contact details and then said our goodbyes and they departed, apparently because my ‘scope sharing mate wanted to go back to Potteric Carr where he was warden to gloat to one of his colleagues about seeing the Lesser Sand Plover!

Anyway, back to the bird and birding.

I readjusted my position, and once again fortuitously struck lucky by inadvertently standing next to another birder willing to share his very good ‘scope with me. This time he was from my side of the Pennines, but equally keen to share the experience. He had his tripod set as low as possible and despite having to kneel down in the silty-sands of the beach to view, this and the fact that the bird was closer than ever meant that the views were very good.

More birders had drifted away by now, and perhaps for this reason the waders (and the sand plover in particular) were as close as they had been throughout my stay. I took full advantage of another generous Northern birder and used his ‘scope to get my best views. During this time the bird moved to within 20 m of the nearest small group of birders / photographers / digiscopers.

I decided that that was the place to be and moved from my position to theirs, helped by the fact that an absolutely massive bloke was doing the same and shielded me totally from view. Once there, I obviously got the best binocular views I had.

As a rain shower appeared to be heading our way, fast, I decided to quit whilst I was ahead, and so walked back to the Rimac car-park a very happy birder. I was thrilled to have re-discovered ‘spontaneous’ twitching and so enjoyed the walk through interesting coastal habitats all the more recounting the day’s events as I went.

The bird was obviously very reminiscent of the two previous Greater Sand Plovers I had seen, certainly in terms of structure, shape and plumage. However, it also had certain, subtle but definite characteristics which made it stand out as a ‘Lesser’.

Firstly, my binocular views. The bird was obviously bigger and bulkier than the accompanying Ringed Plovers and could be easily picked out by a combination of this appearance and its paler plumage. Obviously, my binocular views were best for picking out jizz-related characteristics. Besides the size and structure, I noted that the bird appeared front-heavy, and as a consequence appeared to, ‘totter forwards a few paces before stopping and pecking at the sand’. This pattern of movement was constant, apart from when it occasionally flew a few tens of metres. It was apparent that there was some truth in the adage about three or four paces compared to the Greater Sand Plovers eight or nine or so. In flight it again was an obvious plover, with a broadish white wing-bar showing in flight as it wheeled around from one place to the next. Also apparent with binoculars was the predominance of white plumage at the stubby looking rear-end of what was a dumpy looking bird. The legs were long and apparently black, and even at this range the bill looked like a far more delicate affair than that of the preceding Greater Sand Plovers. With such views it was difficult to make out any of the subtleties of its plumage, beyond the white underparts, separated by an orangey breast band and a darker face mask around the eye and apparently between the eye and bill. The upperparts were a light grey-brown.

With the borrowed ‘scopes (and particularly the second one when the bird was closer) at least some of the subtleties of the plumage and the Lesser v. Greater Sand Plover i.d. criteria could be discerned. The orange breast band was clearly defined at its interface with the white throat patch but merged into the white belly. Equally, the throat patch had a clearly defined edge where it reached the facial pattern. This comprised an ‘eye-shadow’ effect mask, an off white supercilium and an otherwise light dull grey-brown cheek patch and cap. There was some darker feathering around and, in particular, in front of the eye but the ‘mask’ was a deceptively variable feature. The upperparts were all grey brown and relatively uniform, although there was an apparent darker line caused by the structure of the folded wing, approximating to the edge of the scapulars and inner wing coverts. The upperparts feathers appeared old and evenly worn. The folded flight feathers appeared slightly darker, in particular, the leading edge of the visible primaries. Similarly, the darker tip to the tail was often visible against the pure white undertail coverts / outer tail feathers. The legs, bill and eye were all black. The legs were long-looking in comparison to Ringed Plover, and the upper tarsus was apparent, as was a bulge at the leg-joint. However, the birds front-heavy pot-bellied appearance made it appear to have not particularly long legs. The bill was Ringed Plover like, rather than Grey Plover like as with Greater Sand Plover.

In flight the wing-bar was obvious, and was broad and parallel on the inner wing, whilst it tapered to a point on the outer wing. As such, it was far more obvious on the inner wing. No indication of feet overlapping the tail could be discerned from the flight views obtained. The tail pattern was not recorded.

Overall, it was a far more ‘delicate’ bird than the more robust looking Greater Sand Plovers I have seen. It was reminiscent of one of the Nearctic plover species (Piping Plover?) in terms of size, structure and appearance. A cracking bird!  

Lesser Sand Plover, Rimac, Lincolnshire, May 2002 (all photographs credited to Graham Catley).