| Currently, visitors to the flats are likely to see sandpipers, avocets, oystercatchers, godwits, dowitchers, plovers and other shorebirds on their way south. |
| For VIPs, read light-bellied Brent geese, barnacle geese and pink-footed geese as well as wigeon, grey plovers and bar-tailed godwits. |
| Last week saw a big arrival of waders in the region, notably Black-tailed Godwits returning from Iceland. |
| Black-tailed godwits are a relatively new arrival but have risen from a few hundred in the 1980s to about 6,000 now. |
| And 80 percent of black-tailed godwits, refined birds with brown slender bodies and long beaks, call the Dutch polder home. |
| Look out too for dunlins, knots, redshanks, bar-tailed godwits, curlews and oystercatchers as they use their long thin beaks to winkle out worms and molluscs. |
