I scouted a route last night for this morning's guided walk. I had the amazing sight of a flock of 42 common sandpipers, so decided that we should view the same area this morning, in the hope that the flock would have remained.
Unfortunately for my merry band, the sandpipers had continued their migration - perhaps they'd heard about the satellite-tagged cuckoo that has already reached the coast of North Africa, or perhaps they decided to take advantage of the northerly wind to speed them on their journey.
Most of the birds we did see were quite predictable: lapwings, common terns, coots, moulting ducks, but there were some great crested grebes sitting on new nests (their first brood of chicks now being independent).
A couple of insects were real eye-catchers. First, some metallic green beetles, found on ox-eye daisies, which I think were Oedemera nobilis - sadly, no common name for them. The next was a white moth with ginger "fur" on the head, fairly large (for a moth), sitting on a broad, green, plantain leaf in the middle of the path. Certainly not a good place to be. After some photos were taken, we moved it off the path. It was a male ghost moth.