Yesterday the marsh became a bit of an egret hotspot... I was happily at home on my day off, tinkering in the garden when I began to get messages that started off with ' Cattle Egret just dropped onto Aveley Pool' through 'There are now TWO Cattle Egrets on Wennington!' and then 'THREE Great White Egrets have just flown down river...' and with several Little Egrets around too, we had ourselves three Egret day!
I continued with my little jobs, had lunch with my parents who had come to visit and then cracked and leapt in the car and headed north of the Thames on a mini Twitch!
The traffic was kind to me but the birds were not and it took a slightly nervous hour to finally locate one of the Cattle Egrets as it stalked through the grass out on Aveley with that chunky head and short orange dagger of a bill.
Cattle Egret - Max Hellicar
And these three by Karl Price
They always seem such an intense bird, serious looking and concentrating on stabbing at the next morsel in front of them.
Happy with my views I headed back to the centre for a cuppa and a bit of shortbread before making my way home, again with bizarrely no hold ups!
One of the Cattle Egrets is still here today ranging between the cows on Wennington Marsh and loafing around Aveley Pool. It looks like the former is best in the mornings as the bird was seen arriving from the west before 9am and looked like it may have come from as far up river as Crossness.
Good luck tomorrow and a great find by Jonathan Wasse.. thank you!
24-10-16