The first real opportunity for me, then, was in August 1997, in Pagham Harbour. A nifty afternoon off and I was on my way to Church Norton. The bird was on show immediately – great! My first view was through Ron Johns’s Questar. ‘Shouldn’t it be a bit bigger?’, I asked. A single raised eyebrow was the only response. But I was still troubled by it. I had the MacMillan Guide to Birds of the Middle East in the car, and looking at it I and a few others on the sidelines all pointed at atrifrons Lesser Sand Plover and said, ‘That’s it!’ Trouble is, none of that little group had ever seen a sand plover of any description before and we simply weren’t taken seriously. That evening I tried phoning a few people to voice my suspicions, but my confidence was starting to wane in the face of repeated messages saying it was a Greater and I’m afraid to say I backed off. It took several days after the bird had departed before photos started to circulate (imagine that happening now!), at which point all hell broke loose. It was indeed Britain’s first Lesser Sand Plover (re-identification of the 1991 Don estuary bird was yet to happen), and most had missed it. I ticked it, of course, but felt distinctly uneasy about the number of friends who had not travelled to see it.
The next sand plover to break was a corking summer-plumaged Greater at John Muir Country Park in Lothian in June 1999. Only problem was that the next day I had an interview in London for a work promotion. As I boarded the train in Taunton the next morning I knew the bird was still there. I’d worked out that it was theoretically possible to jump on a train to Edinburgh after the interview and get to the site in daylight that evening, but it would mean turning up with no optics, hoping that someone was there to show me the bird, then spending a few hours on the way back sat on a station platform in Birmingham in the middle of the night, all while still in my interview suit. I decided against. But I did head up that night, with Phil Sydenham in tow, only to dip the next day. And I didn’t get the promotion. Rats!
Roll on a few years until May 2002, and another reported Greater Sand Plover turned up at Rimac in Lincolnshire. Phil Sydenham was again my companion and we were the first birders on the beach at dawn. I scanned anxiously, refound the bird, then quickly went from elation to deflation to worry: ‘There it is…Oh!’ At 5 am on a Sunday morning, I had relocated the ‘Greater’ and immediately realised it in fact looked far more like a Lesser. What to do now? Among the next few birders on the scene were Andy Clifton’s crew, so I beckoned them over and told them of my doubts while they were watching the bird. No-one felt quite confident enough to jump to a definite ID, but we knew we had to alert people. By mutual agreement Andy and I phoned it out simultaneously to our respective pager services (I was with Birdnet at the time), explaining our doubts. I called Paul C too, waking him up but feeling the need to alert him to the possibility. A few more birders arrived on spec, and we settled down to watch it. Gradually more and more features were seen, then at about 8.10 am it flew for the first time, and from that point on I was 90+% sure it was a Lesser. I still didn’t quite bite the bullet, and it went out as a probable, but that was enough.
The rest is history. More birders piled in, and we were amused to hear the same discussions going on that we had had a few hours earlier, but finally it was clear that it was indeed a Lesser. So, no tick for me, but I could at least feel good that, having been party to the Pagham balls-up, I played a major part in giving people another opportunity to connect. And they did, in droves. After a bit of stewarding trying to keep arriving birders off the Ringed Plover nesting area, I drove home happy, tooting cheerily on the M5 at various cars and coaches full of equally happy Yeovil Town fans, celebrating having just won the FA Trophy at Villa Park.
The very next year, and another Greater Sand Plover report, this time from Keyhaven in Hampshire. I got there as quickly as I could and hiked out along the sea wall. The bird was still there, and looked good: long-billed, long-legged, sleek, and attenuated – nothing like the rounded, dumpy thing at Rimac. I could finally celebrate seeing a Greater! Then, just as I got back to my car, I got a phone call: ‘Killian thinks it’s a Lesser.’ Heavyweight opinion, and, as so often, Killian Mullarney had got it right, from photos he’d been sent. A mongolus group Lesser it indeed was.
Roll on yet another year, and in early July 2004 came another report of a Greater, this time from Snettisham in Norfolk. It couldn’t happen again, surely? Thanks be to the birding gods, no it didn’t. It was indeed a Greater, and it was still there when I got there, and it showed very well, and it was a corker. At last! I mean, I shouldn’t complain about having seen three Lesser Sand Plovers in Britain (with a potential split covered in the process, very much more by luck than judgement), but it really was getting to be a pain in the arse!
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