Long-toed Stint at St.Aidain's RSPB

Friday saw some debate on the identity of a small wader found at St.Aidan's RSPB reserve in West Yorkshire first seen distantly and called as Temminck's Stint only to be later ID'd as a Least Sandpiper neither of which would be particularly of interest being outside my year list travel restrictions but late evening news arrived that the bird had been re-identified from photographs and was now considered to be a much rarer Long-toed Stint. A vagrant from the east with just two British records and one Irish.

1970 saw the first British record in Cornwall followed by the 1982 bird in Cleveland whilst there was a bird at Ballycotton in Cork in 1996. Another bird was reported at Weir Wood reservoir, East Sussex in 2011 but the record seems to have never been submitted/accepted. All records to date have been short stayers so we needed to react fast to this one. We decided to wait for news in the morning and luckily the bird had stayed but wasn't found until 8.26am. A quick call to the Jim's and we were on our way at 9am arriving on site at 12.15pm. 

Just some of the over flow parking on this very large twitch

The large car park was full and the main road was lined both sides with cars for several hundred yards but we eventually managed to get a spot in the car park and started the mile or so walk along the path to Ashley Lake were the bird had relocated to whilst we were travelling. As we reached the lake we could see a large twitch had built up and it took a while to slot ourselves into the crowd and set up the scopes but thankfully the bird was active and continued to walk around the small island giving great views to all that had made the effort to see it. I worked on the ID features having had long discussion with Jim on the way up about the difference between the Stint and the Least Sandpiper and left satisfied that we'd added a life tick but of course I'll leave it pending until fully accepted. We added another late year tick when a Red-breasted Merganser put in a brief appearance.

The bird attracted a couple of thousand plus birders on day one.

My first visit to this splendid and vast reserve.

Showing the history of the reserve

The view from the visitor centre with the twitch away in the distance by the green buildings 

This tick if accepted would by Jim's 399th BOU and he has the Pilning Black-eared Wheatear in the pending file too so could be his 400th if both accepted so a nice landmark in the waiting and a pleasure to share the hobby with him as he's built this total.

As for my own lists well the year list has finally moved again to a very modest 220 whilst if accepted the Long-toed Stint will move the life list to 424 (this includes the long standing as pending Black-eared Wheatear at Pilning but is otherwise clean) 

Dad viewing the Stint and his 383rd BOU tick