The sighting of a little egret is still a pinch-myself moment

SEEN IN the deteriorating light of a grainy dusk, the little egret had the appearance of a ghostly apparition as it hoisted itself into the air and flew across an isolated pond on the moorland fringes above Bingley.

The hoarse “karrk” of the small white member of the heron family was still grating in my ears when it put down on the other side of the pond and scared the living daylights out of a moorhen.

The previous one I had seen was at a partially flooded meadow near Gargrave in early January, and so this bird completed a sort of lockdown bookend of little egrets.

Both locations – out-of-theway and somewhat random bits of water – have, for me at least, become characteristic of the species.

Yes, they turn up regularly at well-known birdwatching haunts like the RSPB’s wetland reserves along the lower Aire, on the south east side of Leeds.

But, they are just as likely to appear anywhere that water accumulates and there is the slightest chance of finding a meal of amphibians, insects and worms.

These encounters are always a bit of a pinch-myself moment.

Until the 1990s I had only ever seen little egrets on Mediterranean marshes. But in the space of a few years they seemed to become a reliable sighting on trips to places like the Lower Derwent Valley and the RSPB’s reserve at Blacktoft Sands, near Goole.

The bird’s elegant neck plumes were once much prized by hat-makers.

In the 17th century the pioneering Sheffield ornithologist, Francis Willughby, wrote of their “use in caps and head pieces for ornament, and which are sold very dear in the cities subject to the Turk”.

At one point it was said the plumes were more valuable than gold.

They fetched £15 an ounce (worth around £1,500 today). Hunters couldn’t keep up with demand in the 19th century, which led to the establishment of egret farms.

Happily, the fashion changed along with attitudes to bird conservation.

It was to stop the slaughter of birds for their feathers that the RSPB came into being.

Today, in the UK bird world the little egret is said to be the greatest beneficiary of climate change.

Up to the late 1950s there had been just a couple of dozen sightings of the bird in Britain. In Yorkshire, there were a few records of them being found dead and one or two birds actually live and well near to the coast.

In 1984 three birdwatchers were amazed to find one on a pond known as Queen Mary’s Dubb, to the north of Ripon.

Now there are at least 1,100 pairs breeding in the UK and they nest in several parts of Yorkshire. One of the sites the RSPB has publicised is its Hook Island reserve in the River Ouse.

There are sometimes a couple of little egrets hanging around my local stretch of the River Aire.

Surely can’t be too much to hope for that they will soon nest within a 15-minute walk from the front door.