Whiskered Tern and Cuckoo

Today was the real last day of March despite my referring to yesterday as such----a slip which many retired folk will recognise.
And it was a good day, both weatherwise with a return to warm sunshine and there were lots of interesting birds around to boot.
I heard my first cuckoo of the year from the garden this afternoon and earlier I saw my second hoopoe.
I was shovelling gravel for much of the day but I managed to pop down to the Tardoire in the late afternoon. The first bird which caught my eye was a whiskered tern which was delicately dipping into the flooded field as it incessantly quarter up and down, sometimes surrounded by fifty or so black headed gulls.
A telescope was necessary to view the distant waders and they amounted to several ruff, six green sandpipers, three lapwing, two redshank and a little ringed plover.
As for wildfowl, the four mallards were accompanied by a pair of garganey and a male wigeon.
The mute swans still numbered seven and grey herons totaled about the same.
A few water pipits were feeding close to where I was standing.
A brief visit to the Bandiat where the floods are once again fast receding, revealed another beautifully plumaged male garganey but nothing else that was not there yesterday although the sight of a little grebe swimming around in the middle of a flooded road made me smile, and ten grey herons stood stock still in a field like a line of sentries.
During one of my morning gravel runs I saw three black kites together near the N10.
Corn buntings have become a common sight and sound over the last few days.