Williamsons weekly notes Aug 5 2009

Well, here are two more Sussex waders just to give you an idea of what we have in the county over the coming season.

These two photos shows a purple sandpiper (above), and a grey plover (below). They seem dauntingly similar, like many of the waders.

Fear not, this is a trick. The purple sandpiper is only eight inches long, the grey plover is 12 inches. Sure, they both have speckled backs.

Both have black wings and medium beaks.

But would you expect to see a purple in the same place as the grey? No.

Most of the 32 species of waders which visit Sussex live in their own little niches. Half the trick is to know what a particular bit of habitat will produce.

Like last week's common sandpiper with his muddy margins of lakes and rivers, purple sandpipers have their choice of place to live too.

He likes rocks and shingle. So now and then in Sussex you will see him on the shingly shores, but mainly down below the chalky cliffs on the weed-strewn boulders, scuttling about on his little ochre-yellow legs dodging the waves and the surge of tide.

He is a tame little fellow, allowing you close approach as if you were just another swimmer battling with a breaker or half buried in the brine. I know you will see him most, on the coasts of Yorkshire or Northumberland.

So much he loves the waves, he was called the sea sandpiper 200 years ago.

Our grey plover, though, enjoys waves and rocks about as much as the average pussycat.

He wants mud: not river mud or lakeside mud, but salty mud, the stickier the better.

He will start to arrive now from the Arctic and spend a comfortable winter on the ooze in all the bays and corners of the harbours where the tide is slackest and calmest, where the worms lie in millions in their tunnels, wanting just the same quiet life as the grey.

There, this plover, cousin of the green, the lapwing, will march solemnly about listening for the turn of the worm in the tunnel, and winkle these morsels out one after another.

Like all waders he likes company at high tide, and huddles together awaiting the fall.

Huddled together greys look a bit like godwits, 'tis true, to the naked eye. But those are bigger. Or like dunlin. But those are smaller.

What a lot of fun one can have down on the seashore picking out the puzzles of the plovers and sussing the sandpipers.