Sometimes when you are looking for inspiration it just lands in front of you. Well almost ...
I was wandering around Newport Wetlands yesterday trying to find something I could blog about for you. I hoped to see some of the summer migrants that have started arriving, Wheatear, Cetti Warblers and Sand Martins have been reported at the site. Whilst I was there yesterday the hedgerows seemed to be alive with the sounds of Chiffchaffs, one of those convenient birds that sing its name, and perhaps an outside contender for the “little brown job club”. There were a fair few Wrens making up for their diminutive size with their ear piercing song from within the scrub and brambles. I could have waxed lyrical about the Bittern I watched from the hide, slowly gliding over the reed beds along the coastal path, looking for a suitable spot to land and have a spot of lunch, but none of this inspired me enough, wonderful as it was to watch.
Like the Bittern I was about to head back for a spot of lunch too, although frog is definitely not on the menu at the visitor centre, when I got a tweet saying a Great White Egret had been spotted down at Goldcliff Lagoons. Inspiration had arrived.
Little Egrets have been fairly common at Newport Wetlands and the Gwent Levels for quite some years now, in fact, it was a hot spot for watching them for quite a while. They have now spread across most of the coastline of England, Wales and Ireland. It is quite remarkable to think that as recently as 1989 it was a bird of “twitchable” status and the first breeding pair in the UK were recorded only as far back as 1996. Wales had to wait another six years for its first breeding pair in 2002, just ten years ago. It is quite a remarkable rate of colonisation by this heron.
Little Egrets have two closely related cousins, so to speak. Both of which appear to be following the same pattern of colonisation that the Little Egrets did twenty three years ago. There has been a Great White Egret at Goldcliff before, and their appearances are becoming more and more common. Yesterday was my first proper look at this magnificent pristine white heron. It was in full breeding plumage, sporting a rather fetching ruff of feathers around its waist. It also rather handily didn’t move a lot, which allowed me to get at least a couple of half decent photographs of it despite being a long way off. You really got a sense of its large size when a Grey Heron and two Little Egrets starting feeding near it, it almost made them look like toy birds.
Another bird closely related to the Egrets is the Cattle Egret. They are another bird undergoing expansion into the UK. Sightings are still relatively rare, but are on the up generally. A pair bred in the UK for the first time in 2008. As their name suggests, they have an association with cattle. They feed on the insects that cattle disturb whilst grazing, their move away from the water’s edge means they have actually lost their ability to see aquatic prey. A Cattle Egret was reported at Newport Wetlands last August, but are any of these birds the next big thing? They are already here. I think that honour may go to bird that is on the cusp of joining them on this island, and again, a bird that caused quite a stir recently down on the Gwent Levels.
Back in January of this year two Glossy Ibis were reported down on the Wetlands, since then there has been a smattering of reports of these enigmatic birds all along the South Wales coast, at the time of writing this blog they were still present in Pembrokeshire, with numbers reaching double figures at one point. It is surely only a matter of time before they breed here, and maybe Wales will be the first to report this. A lot of the birding websites have already “downgraded” them from being rarities to scarcities, and they will be surely be added to the RSPB’s comprehensive A-Z of birds on this website. I think they really are the next big thing in the British and Welsh birding world!