I took this photograph this afternoon, at Winterbournes Downs near Salisbury, but couldn't identify the bird. Once I processed it and put it into Merlin ID, it suggested a Great Blue Heron. Can anyone confirm this or suggest otherwise?
Set your Merlin to Western Paleartic.
Your bird is a Grey Heron - GBH are incredibly rare ( 3 records) and the last positive id was Scilly Isles in 2015
Cin J
Hi, many thanks for your reply, which makes sense especially after I Googled GBH and noticed the Scilly Isle reference. I will check/reset my Merlin ID.
The bird in the photo was also fairly small and I'm used to seeing much bigger Grey Herons, I wondered if it was a fledgling, but got even more confused with the Merlin ID suggestion (I was looking for Curlews at the time!)