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Juvenile Semi-palmated Sandpiper -
St Agnes, Isles of Scilly, 16th and 17th September 2003
Tony J Morris, with photographs by Ashley Fisher and Claudia N Morris.

On Monday 15th September 2003 I had taken a trip over to St. Agnes for the day. After a morning on and around Wingletang down and meeting my wife for lunch at the Turks Head, I spent the afternoon on the north side of the island. Whilst counting Ringed Plovers and other waders on Periglis beach I suddenly noticed a moulting Golden Plover type. Where it had appeared from I don’t know, but I was immediately taken by its quite leggy appearance. I thought the bird was going to fly when a couple of people walked down the beach, but instead it walked into the edge of an area of large pebbles part way up the beach and sat there, partly obscured. Being aware of the need to check the axillary and under-wing colour, I concentrated entirely on this bird, hoping it would lift its wings. After about 5 minutes of non-cooperation, I decided to try and take a photograph.

Sods Law now took hold and as I was getting my camera from my back-pack three or four, not particularly quiet people seemed to burst onto the scene from different angles and the bird disappeared, presumably having flown when my eye was off it. At least, scanning the beach again, I failed to relocate it.

Being ever cautious, I decided that the bird had to go down as just a Golden Plover and I later mentioned it as such to Will Wagstaff when I spoke to him at the Pilot’s Gig back on St Mary’s. Ironically, Will asked me if I couldn’t make it into an AGP and I told him that I had tried hard to do so [although without relating the full story].

Waders on Porth Coose / Periglis, but no large plovers.

Photograph Copyright © Anthony J Morris.

Later that evening, in a conversation with Ashley Fisher he told me that a possible American Golden Plover had apparently been seen on Agnes the previous day without being publicised and was seen again today, 15^th, so I told Ash the above episode.

Consequently, next afternoon the 16th, Bob Flood, Ashley Fisher and myself went back over to Agnes to take a look at Periglis around the same time as I had seen the leggy plover the previous day. We were having no luck on the American Golden Plover front, but Bob did inadvertently flush a Tawny Pipit from long grass at Browarth and watched it fly over the Camp Site at Troy Town. We wandered across to try and relocate it, managed that successfully and dug out an Ortolan in the process. Time was now getting on so we wandered back to Periglis for one last scan before we went for the 4:30 launch back to St. Mary’s.

It must have been about 3:45 now and no sign of any large plovers but, as we sat down to scan Periglis for one last time, right in the corner at the Porth Coose end of the beach, Bob picked out a Curlew Sandpiper and another small wader - a small stint-like wader. Before we could make anything of it, they both went up and the stint-type flew across in front of us and across the bay towards Bergecooth. We had to get across there. After a quick dash, we located the bird, perched on the beach and then a rock just below us. Sods Law strikes again - the light is against us, literally, it was in our faces and we were looking at nothing much more than a silhouette. We could see a grey-brown stint with a scaly looking back, and a stout-ish bill about the same length as the head. But with people on the beach it flew again after only a few seconds. Bob and Ash both declared they new exactly what it was - a “Semi-p”. I knew I was looking at a stint-type that I had never seen before. But none of us had seen enough to satisfy the rarity men, one of which coincidentally arrived on the scene and seemed to be extremely sceptical about our claim.

Unfortunately, with my wife waiting for me on the 4:30 boat and a booking at the Pilot’s Gig in an hour and a half, I had to go. Bob and Ash were going to stay on Agnes to try and pin the bird down and worry about getting back thereafter. So after a quick look back at Periglis and Porth Coose, I made a very mad dash back to the quay. Claudia was on the boat somewhere [she had already sent me a text message], and as I arrived Will was just climbing aboard behind his tour group for the day. My state of fitness not being what it should be, I was totally knacked by this time, although Will was impressed by my apparent turn of speed. But, in hindsight, it seems that my state of exhaustion was also the cause of a slight panic for Will.

On hearing him mention my “impressive turn of speed” I managed to portray to Will that Bob, Ash and I had just found “a probable Semi-p” and that the other two had stayed behind to relocate it. Gasping out sentences each consisting of a single word by now, I heard Will mention “Plover”, to which I replied “No”.

I’m not quite sure how it happened but he or I [or both of us] apparently mis-understood each other and Will was left under the impression we had found a [even more rare] Semi-palmated Plover, thus requiring a few panic phone calls before he was convinced otherwise.

Bob and Ashley made it back by grabbing a lift back with the “Turks Head evening meal trip”. They had been singularly unsuccessful at relocating the sandpiper. A phone call to Ash later that evening confirmed the situation and a third consecutive day on St. Agnes was on the cards.

After an early rise [for me] next morning the three of us met on the quay in time to catch the 9am Post RIB to St Agnes. We wanted the extra hour and a half we would get before the regular launch brought over the bigger crowds. But frustration sets in when the mail is late and time is getting on. By 9:45 the mail still hasn’t arrived and an unfortunate American lady chooses the wrong moment to ask a question about launches - please accept our apologies if you happen to read this.

Then at last, the mail van pulls onto the quay. It stops to unload at the far end. But unfortunately, we’re at one end and Paul and his RIB are at the other. Will he remember that we want a lift?  Better not risk it, so we dash along the quay and catch his eye. Now, however, we need to climb the vertical ladder down the wall of the quay, carrying scopes and tripods etc, in order to get down to the RIB. Ah well, it all adds to the occasion - why make things boring when you need a storyline. So we’re off at last and five minutes later, at 9:55am, we land on St. Agnes.

Photograph Copyright © Claudia N Morris.

Photograph Copyright © Claudia N Morris.

OK, so the tide was all wrong. We knew it would be really, but hope is eternal and we felt we had to maximize our searching time. Porth Killier had plenty of rocks above water, but not really suitable for a stint and anyway, you’d be lucky to find it amongst the rocks and the seaweed. Porth Coose and Periglis had very little shoreline and Bergecooth was the same. We looked all the same, but nothing doing. Next port of call was Beady Pool on the far side of Wingletang Down, but very little scope for waders there. We bided our time until the tide ebbed a little: checked out a few fields for the Ortolan, ate a sandwich, drank a drink at the Coastguards café, and retraced our steps back through Bergecooth, Periglis and to Porth Coose.

The tide was receding now, and we sat at the corner of Porth Coose and Periglis scanning the two shorelines, watching the odd small wader drop in and back out again. We thought that if the Curlew Sandpiper dropped in, that may offer a bit of hope. But all was very quiet and Bob and Ash were losing their optimism to varying degrees. For some reason I wasn’t. I kept saying “it will turn up”. I guess I had to remain positive - I needed this bird for my life-list.

It was about 1:30pm when I started to scan across the bay, back towards Bergecooth. I could see a number of small waders on the ever-increasing shoreline. I could make out Dunlin and Ringed Plover for certain, but I couldn’t be sure about all of the half dozen or so small waders that I could see. I mentioned these to Bob and he and I decided we should walk back round there. Ashley, maybe hadn’t heard that short conversation, and decided to continue scanning Porth Coose.

It took us five or ten minutes to walk round. We scanned the shore line and almost straight away Bob said “Tony it’s here”. “Where are you looking Bob?”.  “It’s the only bird at the water’s edge” he replied. Sorry Bob, but the only birds I could see at the waters edge were all Dunlin in the far corner, or am I being stupid here?  “No, closer, down here, just beyond the green weed”. And, lo and behold, there it was, much closer than I had been scanning.

Photograph Copyright © Ashley Fisher.

Sods Law yet again - no signal on either of our mobiles, so Bob ends up having to shout and gesticulate across for Ashley to get his butt round here quick. But we needn’t have worried. With no-one at all on the beach today [unlike yesterday afternoon] the bird was going nowhere. We spent the next two-and-a-half hours with the bird, getting very close views, watching the bits between the toes that give the bird its name [or partly so].

Photograph Copyright © Ashley Fisher.

We were joined briefly by a guy who had seen “hundreds in Virginia” and a short visit from Doug Page, who now had to believe us. But otherwise, who would believe it, with all the hype about Scilly and the over-crowded ‘birding season’, that here we were, just the three of us, with a bird of this stature all to ourselves.  See … it can happen, even here on the IOS.

The bird was seen by one or two local birders that evening, but was not present the next day or thereafter.

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Information provided by Tony J. Morris
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