Ah, thanks both of you. Waders are just so similar they confuse me. Couple that with low quality photos taken from a moving boat at some distance and I'm completely lost!
Waders are horrible. You have a whole bunch of brown birds which all look extremely similar, and none of them look like what your field-guide says they should look like!
However, you can often immediately narrow down the options by looking at the beak (e.g. in godwits it is longish and slightly upturned; in whimbrels it is longish and downturned, in curlews it is extremely long and downturned, etc), or leg-colour (e.g. the redshanks, greenshank, yellowlegs, etc). It is the mid-sized waders which get really difficult, the sandpipers and knots and things like that.
