Wednesday 20 July 2011

So nearly a Little Egret garden tick!

There's been a Little Egret knocking about down on Bank Island at Wheldrake for the last couple of days. I've not had one here since we moved over here so was quite keen on catching up with it. A couple of drive-bys after work have failed, likely mainly because I couldn't be bothered to walk the 50 m to the bird hide, and the rain etc. I was going to have a look this morning on my way to work but in the end didn't need to...

While walking the dogs around the village I decided to dodge the wet vegetation walk and opted to wander along a farm track going out of the northwest of the village, after a very short while I noticed a white shape coming across me, it was a Little Egret!!! Now anyone who reads my blog often enough will know I keep a garden list! Once I'd checked it wasn't white-morph Little Blue Heron, Snowy Egret or white-morph Western Reef-Heron my next thought was, is it going to fly past my garden... Luckily it went down in a ditch and I was happy I wouldn't have seen it from the garden, so nothing missed, just a nice local bird! I carried on walking the dogs getting good views of the breeding Yellow Wagtail, Tree Sparrow and a couple of singing Corn Bunting that have just recently moved into the area.



Whilst walking back to the house along the lane that runs behind the house I noticed a bird flying away from me being mobbed by crows, it was the Little Egret again, this time it would have been visible from my house/garden, gutted! It circled back towards me where it landed atop a Willow tree with 3 Crows going crazy at it. I legged it back to the house with the dogs in tow ran upstairs, leaned out of the bedroom window to scan the Willow tree, but it had gone. Mega gutted!!!

This would have been one of my better garden birds on my rapidly increasing list! Nevermind, tomorrow I might make Jenny walk the dogs and I'll sit and watch for the Egret! I had a similar run around with Grey Heron a couple of times so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it may still be around.

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