A magical sight, sandpipers that travel around the world

It is only just over two inches longer than a sparrow, and most of that is in the beak.

So as you wander along in the late August and early autumn days when the sea is calm and the sky is blue and the redshanks are piping in the saltings and the ring plovers running like pebbles with legs, keep that eye open for the down-curved beak of the pygmy.

Of course it is not a curlew at all, it just has a beak like a curlew, only quarter the size of that massive instrument. It is a sandpiper, and the proper name nowadays is curlew sandpiper.

Not much bigger than a mouse, these tiddlers span the world in their travels. They do not breed in Europe but far, far away on top of the world in the Russian east arctic.

First eggs are laid in the last week of June, and these are ready to fly as young adults by mid August. They then have to make their way south to India, Australia, Malaya, and the African shores.

If there's an easterly wind in early autumn, quite a few youngsters will get their navigation wrong and find themselves 1,000 miles off course in Britain. About 50 are counted each year in Sussex in August and September.

However, there have been some bonanza years for Sussex birders, with 85 curlew sandpipers in one year.

How I remember a wonderful day along the banks of the Lincolnshire Wash in 1969 when 2,000 were present in that vast tidal marsh, with one flock of 500 together.

Here in Sussex, there was the flock of ten birds at Sidlesham Ferry near Selsey five years ago, in September. A magical moment each time you see more than five together in my book, a really red-letter day.

These sandpipers differ from our commoner dunlin with a more upright stance. They also have a big white rump as they fly away from you, and white wing bars.

Those two diagnostic features can pretty well distinguish the bird from any other sandpipers you'll ever see in Sussex. Dunlins do not have a pure white rump. Wood sandpipers do but no white wing bar.

Common sandpipers (also now appearing here) have no white rump but do have a white wing bar. The turnstone which is common in Sussex in winter has both but its otherwise blackish plumage tells you not to bother.

A fascinating subject once you get into it, and right on our doorstep well, shoreline.