Tim Melling – Great White Egret
Tim writes: the 8th October started well for me as almost unbelievably this was the second species of bird I saw thiat morning after Moorhen. Numbers three and four were Little Egret and Jack Snipe. The Great White Egret flew into the Canal Scrape at Spurn at 7:10 that morning. When I started birdwatching Great White Egret was a very rare visitor to Britain. Only two were reported in Britain between 1950 and 1973. About one a year was recorded to 1985 then they started to become more frequent. Numbers have continued to grow and now there are dozens of them seen in the UK every year. They started nesting in Somerset in 2012 and that colony has consolidated with a second colony in Norfolk. But large counts of tens of birds have been seen in England this year. My first field guides showed that they were extremely localised in Europe breeding only in Hungary and Romania. But now they are a widespread breeder across much of Europe. They even colonised Finland in 2018.
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