A wet Saturday! 10 September

With the heavy rain this morning, I decided another visit to Pit 60 was called for. The hides would provide sufficient shelter and there was always the possibility of the Great White Egret still being around, although I'd seen no reports of it during the week.

However, following Leo's latest posting it seemed well worth trying a quick visit to Lark Hill en-route. At this site, it is often possible to find some birds almost without leaving the car - just what was needed in these conditions! With minimal effort I found that inside the fenced reservoir compound, there were 2 Whinchats and at least 3 Wheatears, mostly happily feeding on the mown grass despite the rain. 

At the Langley Lane Hide at Pit 60, I was pleased to see the Great White Egret immediately I arrived, but it was right down the far end on the southern bank. So I settled in for a wait, hoping that it, or something else, would come closer. Initially there was no sign of any waders, but eventually a Common Sandpiper and then 2 Green Sands showed, although not close enough for any pics. A Kingfisher also appeared very briefly, and flew onto the straight post in front of the hide, but this is quite distant and the light was awful.

Meanwhile, the GW Egret was walking back along the southern shore, gradually getting closer. It then flew over to the north shore, without ever getting to an 'interesting' distance. Now last time it did this, I had watched as it ended up walking right past a deserted North Shore hide. So when it seemed to be showing some signs of moving in that direction, I decided to risk it, and make a move to that hide. On arrival, although it wasn't very close, opening the shutters seemed to scare it, and it flew a short distance to a prominent rock where it proceeded to spend a long time preening. Eventually, it decided it was feeding time again, and seemed to have forgotten about the small disturbance from the hide, because it started walking in my direction! 

After a few false starts, it progressed along the shore line, going right in front of the hide. From this hide the shore is more distant than from the LL hide, so there was no problem getting the whole bird in the frame. Right at its closest point, it was attacked by a Grey Heron and flew, but I managed to get a few frames of it before it went out of view behind the closed right hand shutters.

The light for these photos was very dull and soft in the rain which probably helped to some extent as normally one is looking right into the light from this hide which isn't good at all for photos.

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Great White Egret

Go to to my website for a larger image