Common Sandpiper

The Common Sandpiper is a smallish wader with contrasting brown upperparts and white underparts. It habitually bobs up and down and has a distinctive flight with stiff, bowed wings. Its presence is often betrayed by its three-note call which it gives as it flies off.

Common Sandpipers breed along fast-flowing upland streams and rivers and at the edges of lochs and lakes in Scotland, Wales and the north of England. Summer visitors arrive in March and April and leave the breeding grounds in July and August with the young following in September.

During the spring and autumn passage migration, they can be found elsewhere in the UK, near lakes, gravel pits, reservoirs, rivers, ditches, coastal shores and estuaries.

Date: 9th June 2007

Location: Craignure Bay, Mull, Argyll