Waders

After a very wet morning, the weather seemed to have brightened up(or so we thought) and we headed out for a drive.
We were going to go towards Wales, but the traffic was quite heavy so we found ourselves at RSPB Burton Mere instead.
I love Burton Mere for the variety of birds, but from a photography perspective, the opportunities are very limited as the birds are normally too far away, even with a big lens.
Today we were treated to views of both hen and marsh harriers hunting along with a kestrel, lots of geese and ducks, a cattle egret and a number of waders.
There were loads of black tailed godwits, a few avocets, 3 ruff, a small flock of dunlin and 3 snipe. We had missed the greenshank and the sandpiper that were around this morning, but I was quite pleased with our sightings for today. I've never seen ruff before, and the avocet is my favourite wader, so I as very happy to see some.  Most of my shots were very grainy as they were so heavily cropped, but I liked this one as it showed three different species of wader - dunlin, ruff and godwit.
Extras show the cattle egret, snipe and avocet

I hope to have caught up with all your journals by the end of the evening - it's been lovely reading about what you've all been up to.

Thank you all for the hearts, stars and comments on mine - they are so much appreciated.