Wood sandpipers, St Helens

I toured a few local sites in St Helens today and was delighted to come across two wood sandpipers. These are only the 4th record for the borough, the first this century and a new St Helens tick for me, bringing my total to 197. If only we had a few more wetlands like this I would very soon get past 200, but there's a real dearth of habitat for waders locally.

While I was watching a red kite flew over and at least four yellow wagtails were nearby, including one bird which looked to be a Channel wagtail.

 Yellow wagtail.

Sadly the Channel wagtail only dropped in for a minute and I messed up the photography, but it looks a good contender to me.