Nature Notes – October 2026
Eight Yellow Legs
This month features two bird species seen locally that have probably arrived from northern Canada.
On 15 September I was at Rutland Water early in the morning looking for Spoonbills. After eventually seeing three Spoonbills, I started looking through the other wading birds in front of “Smew Hide”. I was soon rewarded with good views of a, locally rare, wader. A suite of features needed to be checked. After a minor panic that the leg colour was wrong, its pale yellow legs emerged from a covering of black mud, confirming the identification as a juvenile Pectoral Sandpiper.
On average we only see one of these each year in Leicestershire and Rutland, but this bird was followed by a second in north-west Leicestershire and a third, again at Rutland Water, on 29 September.
More unexpected was another wader from North America. This bird, a Lesser Yellowlegs, has bright yellow legs. It was also at the Egleton Reserve at Rutland Water, arriving in the last week in September. This bird has only been recorded four times previously in our counties and one was last seen in 2010. It and the second Rutland Water Pectoral Sandpiper, were present into October.
A few years ago a Lesser Yellowlegs in Lincolnshire stayed for months. Hopefully this bird will follow that example. It is this month’s photograph; kindly provided by John Abraham.
David Scott
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