Spotted on Nailsea Tickenham moors:

I spotted two white birds on the moors, have a look thought the bird book and I find they where egrets. First I've ever seen there.

In the 60's we use to have lots of lapwings around, where have they got? will they come back?

I usually see lapwings displaying in the fields along North Drove in April, but they never seem to breed successfully. There were about six pairs last year - I don't think the population density is high enough to withstand predation by corvids. It's a great shame, I love lapwings.

I used to survey the moor through the 1980s as part of the British Trust for Ornithology's "Common Bird Census".
At that time there were between 6 and 10 pairs of Lapwing breeding, with some successful broods but many failures. So it looks like the summer population hasn't changed that much in 30 years.
(At the start of the 80s there were still a few Snipe and Redshank as well, but breeding ceased early in the decade; any signs of them now?)

A mild, still evening in April or early May is best to check if Snipe are breeding. I used to walk out along North Drove to the middle of the moor and listen for their "chippa-chippa-chippa" call from the ground, or the magical sound of their "drumming" from flight. (If you're not familiar with the sound, the RSPB website has an audio on their Snipe page which ends with a snatch of "drumming"). I fear, though, that they are likely to be long-gone.