Your Birding Month

Birds to find this month include tits, terns and warblers

When Bird Watching was launched in 1986, no one would have dreamed that the Great White Egret would one day be our Bird of the Month. They were seriously rare birds back then, but the rise and rise of these stately white giants has been nothing short of phenomenal. If you have been birdwatching for many decades, you probably have field guides dating from the 1970s. Dig one out and check the distribution map for Great White Egret (or it may be called Great White Heron). It will probably show them as breeding as far west as Turkey!

How things have changed in the last few decades and the spread of all the egrets (Little and Cattle as well as Great White) has been incredible. By 2006, they had become regular enough in the UK to be no longer considered by the British Birds Rarities Committee (BBRC) and by 2012, they were breeding in north Somerset. Today, there are comfortably more than a dozen pairs nesting in the UK. And surely, just as Little Egrets have moved inexorably across the country since first breeding in Dorset in 1996, so Great White Egrets are on course to conquer the rest of the country! Despite becoming increasingly regular (common is still too strong a word), and being straightforward to identify, the Great White Egret remains one of the most frequently misidentified birds. Poorly seen or distant Little Egrets can give an impression of larger size and be ‘claimed’ as the larger species. ID should be straightforward, however, as Great Whites are much larger, usually standing taller than Grey Herons. They also have a pronounced ‘kink’ in the very long neck, dark (not yellow) feet, and for most of the year, a yelloworange bill. However, breeding adults do develop a dark bill, so conceivably could be overlooked as Little Egrets; though this is unusual, as the birds are still huge!