NEW COLONISTS THE FAMOUS FIVE
Highly mobile species such as birds can be gratifyingly quick to occupy restored wetland habitat. This leggy quintet has been causing a stir in recent years, and further colonisations are likely if ongoing wetland recreation schemes remain on track. Will night herons colonise next?
1 COMMON CRANE
After a 400-year absence from Britain, a handful of these spectacular birds set up home on the Norfolk Broads in 1980 and bred successfully in 1982. Since then breeding has been reported in Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Cambridgeshire and north-east Scotland. A reintroduced population in Somerset is thriving.
2 GLOSSY IBIS
Previously a scarce visitor from the Mediterranean, but in 2014 a pair attempted to breed among the avocets and redshanks at the RSPB’s Frampton Marsh reserve in Lincolnshire. The effort was unsuccessful, though hopes are high that the pair will try again, marking the start of a full colonisation.
3 SPOONBILL
Regarded as exotic visitors until the turn of the century, spoonbills have bred successfully on the north Norfolk coast since at least 2010. Non-breeding birds turn up in substantial numbers elsewhere, including a record-breaking 47 on Brownsea Island in October 2014. More widespread breeding is only a matter of time.
4 LITTLE BITTERN
The first confirmed successful breeding effort by these charming little herons – in South Yorkshire in 1984 – was a one-off, but the restoration of Avalon Marshes in Somerset has succeeded in attracting a more sustained colonisation, with breeding attempted every year since 2010 at the RSPB’s Ham Wall reserve.
5 GREAT WHITE EGRET
With increasingly large wintering flocks of these elegant birds as tall as a grey heron appearing on wetlands across southern England over recent years, it seemed only a matter of time before the species followed the little egret in establishing a breeding population. The first chick duly hatched in 2012, at Shapwick Heath National Nature Reserve in Somerset.