Everyone’s main interest was the cattle egret – early risers were rewarded with the close in showing at Easingwold Farm, but at 10:30am it flew north and returned to its traditional haunt of Hempholme. The best photo’s yet of it I have seen were taken by Martin Standley and are on his blog here.
Again thanks to the locals for their patience – if you fancy owning a house that looks out onto a cattle egret then why not look at this one which is where the original sighting was made from. In all seriousness though the Hempholme area does seem to be very up and coming for wildlife – the presence of lots of HLS wet grassland, woodland and shooting cover seems to be generating big returns on wildlife at present.
Really the best bird of the day was a 2w glaucous gull on D res roost – a year first apparently found by Erich and photographed by Martin and on his blog here. A 1w mediterranean gull was another nice bird on O.
Elsewhere the two smew were present – photo here by HVWG:
And on Watton too were egyptian goose, pink-footed goose, c.40 eurasian white-fronted geese. At Struncheonhill were one to two short-eareds, with willow tit D woods, 100 chaffinch in the car park and tawny owl, and three egrets overflying – presumably little.
