Did I say two? There were an incredible three great white egrets at Old Moor today. And an osprey!

Here’s what else was recorded…

First, the only sighting I have from elsewhere in the Dearne Valley was that the recent black-necked grebe is still at Adwick Washland. Amazingly, this bird has been present for four days now and surely must move on soon. See it while you can.


EDIT - No sooner had I pressed 'post' than I spotted some more sightings from Adwick courtesy of Nigel Smith. His tweet can be found here and includes a noctule bat! Can't remember the last one of those we had on here. Thanks Nigel.


At Old Moor, and for the second day running, an osprey was seen this morning. Sadly the bird didn’t hang about. It was picked up over the Mere at 10:05 and from there it flew eastwards until it was lost to view.

Great white egret fishing among grey heron today

Also for the second day running, there were three great white egrets on Wath Ings this morning! (Time for a quick reminder of my last blog on telling these birds apart). One of the three today was the breeding-age bird that has been with us a while, the other two had yellow bills.

However, I did pick up some reports this afternoon that suggested the three seen yesterday were not the same ‘mix’ as the three birds seen today. If you visited on Saturday, this is probably a good time to check those notes and photos. Who knows, it may well be that Old Moor has seen four of these incredible birds this weekend.

One of the two buzzard seen today over Wath Ings

Also of note today was a small flock of nine ringed plover. These seemed to arrive mid-morning and settled on the Mere, roughly about the same time a bittern flew in front of Wath Ings Hide.

Canada and greylag geese were plentiful again today and one estimate put the total for both at around 350.

A snipe hiding on the ‘spit’ at Wath Ings today

And if all that wasn’t enough, there were tantalising glimpses of a barn owl in one of the boxes and a solitary greenshank picked its way around the margins of the main marsh – which seems as good a way as any to sign off.

Until next time.