What I expected to be a quiet visit in the morning on a feeble rising tide turned out to be quite interesting.
On arrival Reed Warblers were singing and showing in the small reedbed by Jubilee houses and the first notable bird was a colour-ringed Little Egret on the beach (left leg black N on white, right leg black 6 on yellow), which I suspect is an English bird - info expected in a couple of weeks. A total of nine Little Egrets were on the marsh later. On the lagoon was one Greenshank and two groups of Redshanks, totalling over a dozen and a singleton on the river had fishing tackle tangled around one leg. The Shelducks were looking settled, with the juveniles getting hard to distinguish from their parents,
A Lesser Whitethroat was feeding in the big broom bush at the end of Pickleridge. It looked like it may have been a juvenile. One or two seem to be around on every visit somewhere between the car park and the hedge on the east side of the river. At least four Mediterranean Gulls were on the beach along with 48 Black-headed Gulls. Only two Curlews were on the beach, but later a total of at least 111 were put up by a dog walker on the marsh, apparently in two separate groups, which passed by each other for a picture. One Whimbrel called from the marsh after they had flown, but was not seen.
Further up the river was a second Greenshank in the middle creek and there were two Common Sandpipers on the double bend below Whiteholme's Farm, which were joined by two Kingfishers on the bank within a couple of feet of each other - too far away with my mini scope to identify age or sex and no clue about their relationship as no begging or mutual feeding, but it would be nice to think they breed somewhere near here.