Another mega lifer pops up - conveniently!

I was down south anyway visiting parents (24th July), so driving another 1.5 hours east was nothing, certainly compared to my previous lengthy drives of late. And this was another potential British lifer. Snettisham RSPB was a familiar site but I'd forgotten how long the walk was from the car-park! Anyway, when I arrived, of course the bird wasn't showing (the tie was out) so I went to a local café for a pint before returning in the late afternoon, along with hundreds of other twitchers. Spotting the rarity amongst the thousands of other waders was no mean feat and would require all those eyes scanning the flocks to pick it out. Suddenly, someone close by called it and I was soon onto the bird: Western Sandpiper! It was still a struggle to keep up with it, mind; it moved quickly along the edge of the shore and often got lost in the crowd of Dunlin. But eventually I got decent telescope views and some (very poor) record shots! Its jizz was interesting: it darted around like a mad thing, apparently unsteady on its feet, and seemed to swoop it head down from side to side (like a spoonbill) to pick up prey form the mud - quite bizarre. In terms of plumage, from distance there was little of note, but inspection of the photos reveals orange/rufous tones to the crown and upperparts, which are clearly absent from Dunlin but present in, say, Little Stint. (The bill is much shorter on the latter species.) The 'spotted necklace' (especially evident in the second, head-on photo below) was another diagnostic feature. It was all quite exciting - with the hundreds of onlookers dashing about to glimpse a view of this mega. And there were other good bird around too: Turtle Dove (2 showed well on the beach and in the nearby trees, calling occasionally - I got some really pleasing shots of one of them when it was on the beach feeing amongst the vegetation), Marsh Harrier (a female type flew over), Peregrine, Curlew Sandpiper (1), Little Stint (1). Oddly, there was also a Muntjac Deer showing well in the fields behind the lakes.