A Lesser Yellowlegs in Lancashire must always be a bird worth seeing and when there is another difficult to see species of wader nearby, well we had to go! Myself and the two Steve’s headed of on what might be one of our last Friday after work trip’s due to the clocks going back. The destination was Aldcliffe Marsh, south west of Lancaster a place none of us had ever visited before, but on this evidence we will be back again. We managed to navigate ourselves along some very narrow, tricky roads after the M6 and A6 and arrived to the news that the Yellowlegs had been seen within the last 15 minutes. We headed along a raised banking and the Yellowlegs was seen near to Wildfowlers Pool, along with Redshanks lots of Snipe, a few Black Tailed Godwits. We then began the quest to see the Wood Sandpiper that seemed to disappear regularly. The day was pretty cold even well wrapped up, winter is on its way we all thought. As we walked back towards the car park other birders told us that the Yellowlegs was now on The Flood and giving photographic opportunities.
We soon saw the bird at fairly close quaters and the two Steve’s got their cameras going. At this point, we were told that a birder had been watching the Wood Sandpiper about 15 minutes ago at the end of the track, that cant be seen from the raised banking, should we or should we go back to see it, well it was warmer in the car, homeward bound!
Cheers Dave O
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