A few more waders

A series of site visits for work allowed me to schedule a mid-afternoon visit to Collingham on the way home, which yielded 2 male Turnstones on Ferry Lane Lake - I'm always struck by what smart little waders they are in breeding dress. 

Turnstones

LaFarge are pumping the water levels down on this pit pretty hard at the moment, and it looks like a fair expanse of gravel is going to be exposed around the current small islands in the near future. This should (hopefully) bring in more waders, but isn't so good for the resident breeders - there are a number of Coot nests that are already being left high and dry, and other birds (e.g. Great Crested Grebes) look like they're holding off nesting until the water levels settle down - which isn't going to happen for a good while. 

I then headed to Mons Pool, where I didn't get very far as I first saw Andrew Hindmarsh (voluntary warden for the site), and then Dan Watson, a really nice guy and a fellow East Anglian living in exile in Notts (he's from Norfolk, but I can't hold that against him). Dan does most of his Notts birding at Hoveringham, check out his blog here. We had a long chat, and were briefly joined by Tom Shields (the @thebeardybirder for anyone on Twitter) until it came onto rain heavily.