Little Egret on New Year’s Day

For a few minutes on New Year’s Day the sky cleared and I decided to take my camera out. What I didn’t expect/think about was the fact that clouds don’t always blow in from the distance – they can form above you where different air conditions meet. It was soon cloudy again, but by then I was on the Shipley Glen path down to Crag Hebble Dam again. And I’m pleased I kept going, even if I did get a bit wet.

The header image shows Loadpit Beck just down from Crag Hebble Dam. Normally it is a quiet flowing stream but today it was quite a torrent and people were keeping their dogs out of it, otherwise they would have been running down stream to catch them.

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Little Egret

I have seen photos and heard from others that Little Egret visit Crag Hebble Dam. Today, while watching a Kingfisher over the far side, one flew in. It spent quite a bit of time in and around the reeds, shaking its yellow feet in the water to disturb fish on the bottom and then catching them.

Little Egrets, like Grey Herons and Great White Egrets, have thin heads and necks. Their beak/bill is long, thin, and pointed – except when tossing and catching a fish. The beak, at the head end can then widen out so it is a lot easier to catch the fish after tossing it. It also means that after catching a fish (or frog, or snake) with with the pointy end they can widen everything out to swallow it head first. The fish it was catching here didn’t need a wide gullet but it did widen out as it tossed it.

When you see an Egret on its own it looks like a decent sized bird, quite majestic, especially with its wings spread. But this one, on occasion, was near a couple of Mallard and I started to realise that they are actually Little. Skinnier and shorter in the body than the Mallard, once you have allowed for tail feathers.

With the bird being bright white it was possible to still take some photos of it even with poor light. However the last one above was pushing the limits, the Egret on the wall showing its yellow feet and the Kingfisher was taken at 1/30s, f:6.7 and 3200 ISO. The one of the Kingfisher atop the Bullrush was taken at 1/60s not a sensible shutter speed for a focal length of 840mm.

Grey Herons

A couple of times during my visit to Crag Hebble I went up the path towards Bingley to look over the gate into the field. The dip in the field near one of the water troughs is a place where, at the right time of year, Grey Herons congregate.

This time the best count was six.