A juvenile Little Ringed Plover around the assembled wader flock for high tide at Crymlyn Burrows, yesterday evening, was a nice surprise. Over the last few years I've seen decent numbers of this delightful wader along the river between the river mouth to Brunel Dock and on the saltmarsh upstream of the road bridges, but never before on the beach. They don't seem to mix in with other small waders very much, indeed more often than not yesterday's bird kept it's distance from the Ringed Plovers, Sanderlings and Dunlins. A couple of Ringed Plovers showed aggressive behaviour towards the LRP while I was watching it, perhaps showing why they prefer to disassociate from the main roost gatherings.
Little Ringed Plovers are a real favourite of mine and seeing this bird yesterday brought me a great deal of satisfaction. That said, I might have been even more pleased if this bird had been generally paler in plumage with darker and slightly longer legs.
There were good numbers in the roost yesterday with Ringed Plovers (267) and Sanderlings (319) making up the bulk of the numbers. Surprisingly few Dunlins, five Knots and a single Turnstone completes the beach count of smaller waders.
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