Snowy(ish) Egret


The snow arrived, just as the Met Office predicted, at 17.00hrs yesterday evening, and fell steadily until 19.30hrs. Only and inch or so settled, but this was enough to cause mayhem on the roads and entice the 'blitz spirit' to resurface across the south-east of England. Elsewhere in Britain people looked out the window, shrugged, and put on a jumper...

Snow means hard weather movements doesn't it? Geese, larks, Lapwings and Golden Plovers fleeing from the icy grip... of course not, at least not yet. It takes an awful lot more to stir things up, but I still head out hoping for just a crumb of bird movement. As expected, not today. I walked through Priest Hill (the wintering cast were still present) and onto the River Hogsmill at Ewell. Little Egrets were in view almost constantly, with two, maybe three present. One bird in particular that was feeding in a side-stream paid little attention to me, so I snapped away. 4+ Kingfisher, 2 Common Snipe and a Chiffchaff were a fine back-up.




Comments

Simon Douglas Thompson said…
Beautiful bird, I normally find them quite skittish. There is one that has settled around a local drain for the winter, one that I run past. Not sure what it is eating, it doesn't seem the liveliest of waters.
13 January 2017 at 14:44
Steve Gale said…
The egrets here are normally skittish as well Simon, but this one didn't seem bothered by me at all.
13 January 2017 at 15:00
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