Day 49 - Lovely Little Egrets

Hi all today's Day 49 and getting close to Christmas. As the colour white is associated with Christmas I thought I'd do a piece of wildlife that was white. As birds are my favourite part of nature I thought I'd put up a white bird. The final challenge was figuring out which white bird. There are loads of them e.g. Swans, Doves or maybe even Albino Blackbirds which seemed like a good idea but I've already covered them in My Blackbird Post. Eventually I decided on possibly the most beautiful of all the white birds, the Little Egret. Anyway here are some facts about them:

Little Egret (Egretta garzetta)

• The Egret part in Little Egret is not technically true as this bird is actually part of the heron family.

• It has white plumes on its head, back and chest with black legs and bill and yellow feet. It also has orange eyes.

• It is an amber status bird as it is a rare breeding species with only 660-740 (we don't know for sure how many it actually is.) Also over winter there are only 4,500 birds in the UK.

• The best time to see them is in the Winter as birds that stay in the UK all year round are joined by others from the rest of the continent. You can also figure out from the numbers above that this is true as well as there are only about 700 breeding pairs meaning there are about 1,400 breeding birds.

• The best place to see them is along South and East coasts of England. Another good place to see them is all over Wales. Also the estuaries of Devon and Cornwall; Poole Harbour and Chichester Harbour hold some of the largest colonies. East Anglia is also a common place to see them.

• They eat a varied diet including fish, molluscs, insects and small mammals and birds!

• Adding to this they are probably the liveliest hunters of the herons and feed mostly by wading through water and using their beak to snap and catch prey.

• They are 60cm long with a 92cm wingspan. Both male and female birds weigh 450g which is a fairly small size for a heron but then again it is the Little Egret.

• Their first UK sighting was in East Yorkshire 1826 and their first breeding record was in Dorset 1996.

Here are some links to some more information

RSPB - Little Egret

BBC Nature - Little Egret

BTO Birdfacts - Little Egret

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.