WFYD
volunteer Diane reported seeing a Little Egret in Brough Park
Fields Nature Reserve in the first week of January 2014.
From
the RSPB website, “Little
Egrets... first
appeared in the UK in significant numbers in 1989 and first bred in
Dorset in 1996......”
In
the recently published (2013) Bird Atlas 2007-11 the authors begin
the page on the Little Egret thus, “The
colonisation and range expansion of the Little Egret represents one
of the most phenomenal shifts in abundance and distribution of any
bird in Britain and Ireland over the past 20 years.”
Little
Egrets are a type of heron, indeed, when they first came to breed in
Britain (from Spain and France) they first established breeding
colonies amongst Grey Heron heronries. Initially they were confined
to the south and east coasts but now they are breeding as far north
as Cumbria and Northumberland. In winter they have been seen in
lowland areas as far north as the Shetland Isles.
Little
Egrets have also been seen at Tittesworth Reservoir and Rudyard Lake
in previous years.
Little
Egret, Devon. Photo courtesy of Nilfanion taken from Wikimedia
Commons
Also recently seen in Brough Park NR are flocks of Brambling feeding on Beech mast under Beech trees, Wigeon and Teal.
