Little Egret

Any mention of Cleethorpes conjures up images of trippers, deck chairs, amusement arcades and candyfloss, but the seashore here is part of the Humber Estuary SSSI and includes a lot of good shore bird habitat, ranging from saltmarsh to muddy sediments that are important feeding sites for waders.

We watched this little egret catching small fish on the saltmarsh last week. They've been resident there for a few years now and it's remarkable how they have become a familiar element in the bird fauna, considering that not so long ago birders would have been jumping up and down with excitement at the sight of one of these exotic colonists. They are one of the good news stories for UK wildlife.

Unusual Fly-past and the Wobbly World of Heat-haze

This black swan from the collection of ornamental waterfowl on the boating lake at Cleethorpes joined the local mute swans for a fly-past this morning, while ....

.... out beyond the saltmarsh a little egret, a classic sailing ship and the wind turbines on the Yorkshire coast of the River Humber all had some wind in their sails, even if everything was shimmering in a heat-haze

Nice bird, shame about its voice

We spent an enjoyable couple of hours earlier this week watching little egrets in Wells-next-the-Sea harbour in Norfolk. These little herons first nested in Britain in 1995 and have since become an increasingly common sight around our coastline, steadily extending their range further north. They have a fascinating, hyperactive way of feeding, quite different from herons that stand immobile and wait for prey to stray within reach. Little egrets pace restlessly through the shallows, stopping every now and then to stir up the mud with one of their large yellow feet. Using this technique, they seemed to mainly disturb partially buried shore crabs, so that they could grab them with a quick stab of the beak as they scuttled away. These are certainly elegant little herons, albeit slightly manic in their feeding habits compared with our native grey heron, but their call is decidedly ugly - you can listen to it here -

http://www.xeno-canto.org/europe/species.php?species_nr2=204.50