Three Yellow wagtails have recently been reported on my local patch so I met Rob there Sunday evening to have a look. Rob had already seen three birds before I arrived and after sitting in our cars for another 30 or 40 minutes we had a total of five!

The plan was to get there nice and early the following morning before to many other people arrived, especially the dogs and their owners as they are more often than not let loose to run free, scattering every bird in the vicinity.

We arrived Monday as planned and sat foe some time in our cars watching three of the Yellow wagtails from a considerable distance. This was never going to be easy as there were literally hundreds of Pied and white wagtails with them which were extremely nervous, coupled with the fact that the site is open grassland we could not formulate a plan to get anywhere near close enough for a shot. Time was now against us as other people were arriving when I noticed a good birding friend of mine Dave Paull with his friend Alec, I went for a quick chat and they were telling me what else they had seen this morning when we noticed a dog chasing a large lamb, they were approx 800m away. We ran as quick as we could (although I'm no Eussaine Bolt, in fact more like Bernie the bolt for anyone that remembers "The Golden Shot") but that's another story.  By the time I got there a fitter and far younger man had arrived to get the dog off the lamb. The dog ran behind us towards some more lambs and thankfully Rob was able to catch the dog before any more damage could be done. The Poor lamb was lying on the floor almost dead from its injuries and the woman owner sauntered over as though she had done nothing wrong. I told her to ring the Police straight away as the poor thing was still suffering but instead she kept protesting her innocence in this episode by trying to tell me that her Dog has never done this before and it was OK to let dogs off the lead here (she obviously had not read all the signs that say quite clearly all dogs must be kept under control!) I told her again to just ring the police and stop talking while this poor animal was still suffering. Eventually the police turned up but the lamb had already died by now. The woman was reprimanded and let on her way to be told if it happened again she could be prosecuted and the dog could be destroyed. Surely she should have at least taken a fine to at least cover the cost of police time and maybe just maybe it might teach her a valuable lesson.

Any chance of Yellow wagtails now had totally gone and all we managed was very distant record shots. We walked along the fence line where my friend Dave had seen Swallows and Sand martins perching on a wire fence. Rob and I were amazed by the sheer numbers of these birds flying around (estimated later at over 400) we had Sand Martin, House Martin and Swallows all perch on the wire fence for us, sometimes there were that many (up to about 60 perched at times) it was hard to isolate one for a shot. After spending a good many hours we did both manage our first decent shots of these species, although as always A BIT CLOSER WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE!

Sand Martin