At 9:20am yesterday I was on the bus to Sully, looking forward to seeing what seabirds might be scavenging along the shore at the 10:16 high tide. A bonus was seeing my first pheasant of the year in a passing field.

Walking down the long narrow path to the beach, I was immediately rewarded with the sight of Black-headed gulls and Oystercatchers looking for worms in the neighbouring field, and a Rock pipit flew up from the shore to join them in their foraging.

The beach looked empty as I strolled along the ‘coastal path’ – really just a line of rocks and mud here – but a flurry of loud peeping made me turn my head and bring the camera up in time to catch this flock of Turnstones flying in.

Further east, scanning the water’s edge with my binoculars, I finally spotted an interesting little group of 3 Turnstones, a Little ringed plover and a Grey plover, the latter two year ticks for me, and I’d not seen a Grey plover so close before (I’m still talking a couple of hundred metres away but see-able with bins and long lens). I watched them for perhaps 10 minutes before two loud women and their dog scared the birds off.

Last, but mostly certainly not least, as these beautiful birds are endangered in Britain, 28 handsome Curlews were using their long curving beaks to probe the playing fields that abut the coastal path in search of worms. After 15 minutes’ watching I left them to their feast, with a silent ‘thanks for being the icing on the cake of my lovely morning at Sully’, and strolled on …