Yeah, quite gripping, no other MSTW records to my knowledge; there used to be a couple of plasticy ones hanging around nearby Denton Res. in the early '90s but they usually disgraced themselves by sticking around for months on end. This one-day threesome at an appropriate time-of-year tick all the boxes, at least given a lack of negative news on their provenance.
Andy mentioned that he had tried to speak to the management regarding habitat quality at the site, which has declined fairly consistently since I first visited nearly 20 years ago. 'In those days' we used to get up to 15 wader species on a single day. This in itself reflects a shifting baseline, given that habitat in the '80s when the site was still grazed by sheep was an order of magnitude better than the following decade, and don't get me started on how good it evidently was in the 1920s........
Ought to count up soon, the site list should be pushing 200 by now!
Alex
_________________
Dr Alexander C. Lees
Lecturer in tropical ecologyManchester Metropolitan University
Lab Associate
Cornell Lab of Ornithology,
Cornell University
http://www.freewebs.com/alexlees/index.htm@Alexander_Lees