An early morning walk at Patch produced the usual suspects, including three wheatears and a mixed flock of ringed plovers and dunlins, but my eye was most drawn to 16 redshanks foraging together all within 30 yards of each other on the spit facing Poppit Sands. Knowing that redshanks are in the family of sandpipers I couldn't help wondering if there was a collective noun for a group of sandpipers. A quick google search threw up four collective nouns, including a cluster, a time-step and a fling, but I was rather taken by the fourth option: a contradiction.
John Ramm