Tornado on Hayling Island makes the Semipalmated Plover a memorable twitch

I hatched a last minute plan to visit Hampshire this morning. First stop was Keyhaven Marsh where despite an early report we failed to connect with the Long-billed Dowitcher. We grafted for it walking from the car park along the sea wall through Keyhaven Lagoon, Fishtail and Butts Lagoon several times but the bird wouldn't show despite the tide pushing large numbers of waders our way. By the time we left we'd seen large groups of Grey and Golden plover, a single Little Ringed Plover and Knot, Lapwings, Black and Bar-tailed Godwits, Snipe, Redshank, Turnstone, Greenshank and Dunlin.

We drove through to Milford on sea and quickly located the Red-breasted Goose swimming with a few Brents. (279) A Rock Pipit gave the camera a brief workout before the rain came in to stop play.

Red-breasted Goose

Rock Pipit

Rock Pipit

From Milford we headed over to Hayling Island and parked up at the Eaststoke beach car park. Walking east along the beach footpath we found a group of birders on the shingle scoping what we hoped would be our target bird. We covered the 800 yards in no time and quickly got on the bird. A Semipalmated Plover (280) sitting amongst Ringed Plovers and Sanderling. We were busy scoping and working on the ID features of this  rare vagrant bird when the heavens opened and the back end of the earlier Tornado hit us. I can honestly say I have never seen so much rain fall so fast. The dash back to the car was faster than the dash to tick the bird but resulted in us all getting a real soaking to the point were I needed a change of clothes for the drive home. This was one of those days that will live long in the memory not only because it delivered a lifer for us all and took my 2013 total passed last years 279 but more for the extreme weather we encountered.