The Juvenile Birder

 A Rarity In & Out of the UK! We set off at 11:00pm on Friday and arrived at Ruan Lanihorne at 7:00am on Saturday. Once it was light enough to scan the estuary, we immediately started to look. There were many Canada Geese & Wigeon out there, as well as a few Curlew , Shelduck and even a Whimbrel . Suddenly, the first flock of Lapwing  flew in and landed in the estuary. After scanning through them in flight, we couldn't see our target bird. We then watched two more groups of Lapwing fly in, all from different directions, as well as a large group of  Golden Plover , until suddenly one person said our target bird was along the water's edge. He let me look through his scope and there it was! The Sociable Lapwing was showing distantly on the estuary. After getting good looks at it through the man's scope, I then managed to get it in my scope, before everything took off and I enjoyed a good view of its distinctive wing pattern. It then landed much closer, allowing me to...

Twitching Top Ticks!  Part I Image from David Woodhouse (same bird, but taken on different date) We were offered a trip to see Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, at an undisclosed site, by a birder called Dave (who we had previously met at Easington & Potteric Carr YWT). We set off at 4:30am and arrived at his house at 7:00am and he took us to the bird location at 7:45am. We were ecstatic when we heard the distinctive drumming and travelled towards the noise. After looking in the wrong spot for a bit, we managed to find the correct area and heard the bird close by. We also met a local birder named Rob, who was also looking for these Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. He said it had been drumming for a bit. We walked towards the sound until it was right in front of us. There was a tree that looked like a stake and had multiple holes in it, so I checked it and I spotted just the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker 's head pecking rapidly at the tee. I alerted Dave & Rob and then moved to get a better...