Hudsonian Whimbrel at Church Norton

With a couple of hours off work today I called the Jim's and asked if they fancied giving the Whimbrel a try and within half an hour we were heading around the London orbital car park (M25) and down the A3. We got lucky and parked in the only space left at Church Norton giving a relatively short walk through the church yard and down to the shoreline. We quickly started scanning a couple of Whimbrel and worked on the obvious to eliminate the birds as possibles. (The white back giving both away eventually) As we scanned we were told that a group had what they suspected to be the target a few hundred yards further along the bank.
When we arrived we found a small group of around thirty watching a sleeping distant spec. We could see the bird was a Whimbrel and the head looked good for the Hud. We watched for two hours until the bird got up and gave a couple of wing stretches before a short flight and we could finally say we'd seen our first Hudsonian Whimbrel. A while later the bird took to the skies again and was easily picked out amongst other Whimbrel and Curlew with it's dark back and underwing.

Hudsonian Whimbrel (The best I could manage)

A very pleasant twitch with good scope views moved the year list to 237 and the life list to 360