Common crane? Brading marshes (RSPB) yesterday (10/03/16)

Only have a description of this bird that possibly was a grus species.

I was going to leave Brading after spending a couple of hours there and around 5pm had one last scan of the area and locked onto a bird in flight. Initial views were side on but it gradually banked and left due east of me and eventually out of sight. It was fairly distant but its jizz suggested a crane rather than a heron: I noted its long neck/head structure that it never retracted (unlike a grey heron say - perhaps the other most likely species to confuse it with). Its wing beats were shallow and the primaries were dark and deeply fingered (again more so than a grey heron would show). Also long legs extended. Flight was more assured compared with a heron - always found herons to be jerky and don't reach such heights as this bird did and with seemingly more ease. But my last views of it were of its arse and of it gradually diminishing into a speck over the horizon, leaving me with a head scratching did I or didn't i see?...and why didn't i attempt some record shots?!..ah well....

Edit: reports of an imm.crane at Brading NR today.

I have no pictures of it (yet)
Here's a library pic:

Otherwise pretty quiet about. Grey wagtail. Green sandpiper heard. 12 blackwits.

Sandown canoe lake/Culver/Brading NR

Meds

linnets

Greenfinch - singing (Havenstreet)

Whale chane - AM

Mipits and a.wags trickling through, but not much else. Sunny but with a nip in the air.

Reed bunting near the chine car park

Coastal footpath not good enough? Pair of clueless dog walkers just stroll across the field disturbing the skylarks etc.

Buzzard high over the garden.

Brading - late PM

Whale chine - Scandinavian rock pipit ssp littoralis?

Interesting looking pipit along the coastal footpath today. Note greyer upperparts, bolder supercilium, whiter underparts. (Pics cropped only - no other adjustments).

Showing a greyer mantle and its supercilium extends beyond the eye.

Above pic shows much paler underparts appearing to extend further up the breast than you'd expect with our resident petrosus

Different light but shows the streaking well and the dark malar patch

Couple more added, vid caps, and again cropped only:

Heavily cropped but shows the supercilium and white throat

Been through some more pics:

Roud including sewage works

Sibe chiff still lingering?

Couple more:

Purple Sandpipers (Canadian) - Foreland

That's more like it (better views). Timely comments from Martin Gray and James Gloyne suggested these birds are probably 'Canadian' breeders as they 'look the part', given how long billed these individuals were. Interesting. 

Two there today, Foreland, calidris maritima

RB mergansers