Lunch with a Dusky Shank !

The Shooting Butts hide at Rainham is one of my favored stop-offs for a lunch break, situated midway around the reserve with good views back and front over the reserve.

There had been some good bird sightings reported around the reserve of late, but not for me, this first part of the reserve walk had been very quite, a distant Marsh Harrier, a couple of Whinchats, which always remained just outside my camera range.
I had resigned myself to a quite day with probably not much to be seen, broke out the lunch box and poured some coffee.

A wader flew in to the scrape in front of the hide, my initial thoughts, another Redshank which are quite common around the reserve.

But no, this one looked different, a Dusky Redshank or a Spotted Redshank as they are more commonly referred too, much more elegant. I believe its the Juvenile Spotted Redshanks that are referred to as 'Dusky' on account of their dusky, brownish grey plumage.

This one stayed on view throughout my lunch break, allowing me to watch it feeding and check out all the salient identification points between this and the Common Redshank

Slimmer and more elegant looking,  dark long bill with red on its lower mandible, prominent white eye stripe, red legs. I did not see it in flight, so the lack of wing bars was not discernible.

 Its feeding habit was atypical too, feeding in slightly deeper water than its more common relative.

These Spotted Redshanks breed in northern Scandinavia and north-west Russia, there southwards migration back to there wintering quarters, southern Europe, Africa and Asia begins as early as June with the females leaving the breeding grounds first, males and  juveniles follow in July and August, most birds passing through in September, this is when they are passing through the UK and often seen around the southern bird reserves

The Dusky Redshank are pretty spectacular in their black breeding plumage, the winter plumage is a  more subtle light grey above, white below, bright red legs and that prominent white stripe above the eyes.

The juveniles have a darker greyish brown wash, with white spots on there upper parts, with strongly barred underparts, legs not quite so bright red more yellowish

I put this one down to a  First winter, there is still some barring on the underparts, and the upperparts look quite dark, although I could be wrong.

An interesting wader to watch until it was lost to view as it moved  behind one of the scrape islands.

One other interesting bird appeared as I was just about to leave the hide, a juvenile Cuckoo which was resting on the posts of the predator fence, a little out of range for my camera, so a few record shots, as I have never managed to photograph a Cuckoo as yet.

Juvenile Cuckoo

Always something to see at Rainham RSPB reserve