I paid a late afternoon visit to Glandwr on Tuesday, arriving about 5pm as the sun was lower and behind me. This resulted in excellent light and super colour render in the birds plumage. My main target was to see the Wood Sandpiper, my sixth or seventh attempt, and eventually I did locate the bird right at the back of the pools on the far left hand side. In the excellent light I was able to see clearly the patterning on the lower breast and flanks, the course mottling on the back. yellow legs and the diffuse pattern on the supercilium behind the eye that makes the supercilium less obvious at this time of the year. I must have spent at least half an hour watching the bird working it's way back and forth along the water's edge. I had gone down to the reserve quite wound up after spending most of my day trying to sort out car hire and various insurances for a trip to Lesvos and mainland Greece, but the sheer beauty of this one bird put all that behind me. But that wasn't all, there were two superb looking White Wagtails together with a number of Pied. Nine singing Sedge Warblers, Elegant Redshanks and the ever delightful Lapwings, 13 Wheatears in the fields and a male Whinchat working along the fence, all that was missing was a pear tree and a Grey Partridge.
After all that I carefully broke the skyline to look out over the Leri, unfortunately now into the sun, to see 10-12 Whimbrel, 7 or 8 Dunlin, more Redshank, a Greenshank, 5 Common Sandpipers all accompanied by 2 Sand Martins and a few Swallows and House Martins. I left felling infinitely more at one with the world than when I arrived.