A time for egrets as cattle bird wades in
BASIL FAWLTY never did provide vistas of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plains to satisfy finicky guests demanding spectacular views from his farcical boarding house.
Safari-style backdrops with big game and bigger skies are not really part of the British countryside, even when you live under the shadow of Whipsnade Zoo like me.
Somehow, the birding deities watching over my favourite little nature reserve last week came up with a welcoming scene that owes its origins to the African savannah.
Cattle egrets play supporting roles in wildlife documentaries when cameras are focusing on elephant herds and lions.they are the small, snowy white birds that hitch rides on the backs of buffalo or get under the feet of zebras.
Seeing one hunkering down on a marshy lagoon, on the edge of the Chiltern Hills, was an auspicious start to life as a permit holder for the wetland reserve where I spent my formative years as a budding birder.
Back in the day, the sewage farm was verboten to trespassers, with lots of fence-climbing and security guard avoidance required to watch waders and wildfowl on smelly settling beds. School summer holidays would see me taking jam sandwiches and a bottle of squash and then performing a limbo to creep under the chain-link fence before immersing myself for the whole day in birdwatching heaven.
By early August, the first shorebirds of the autumn were returning from northern breeding grounds, filling the skies with their haunting calls or whiffling down in compact flocks. Greenshanks, green sandpipers, turnstones and ringed plovers, in numbers usually seen only on the coast, delivered hours of delight about as far away from the sea you will find in England.
A half-century later, the site’s owners allow a handful of permit owners to birdwatch in comfort at the private location, where a remarkable assortment of species still aggregate in an age when wetland birds face increasing challenges to find suitable habitats.
Remarkably, egrets are bucking this trend.the northward expansion of little egrets from Mediterranean climes witnessed over the past three decades is being replicated by increasing numbers of cattle egrets.
A recent study published in the journal British Birds estimates up to 15 pairs are breeding in the country, with as many as 65 individuals over-wintering.
Climatic change is invariably the driving factor in this seismic shift of the cattle egret’s range, with drought conditions in southern Europe impacting on the birds wetland habitats.the ability of cattle egrets to adapt to environmental change is borne by its global spread over the past 100 years. In the 1930s,african birds hopped the Atlantic to colonise the Americas, while a similar Asiatic movement saw them arriving in Australia and New Zealand. Northern Europe now beckons.
A close look at the bird found by the reserve’s warden revealed signs it may have nested this summer, with the warm, apricot tones of its breeding plumage adorning the crown and chest.watching the egret furtively hunkering down alongside juvenile common terns and blackheaded gulls may not have conjured up images of the Serengeti but it brought back memories of a time when school summer holidays were spent at this little piece of paradise.
‘Up to 15 pairs are breeding’