BirdwatchingJulysampler

BREEDING
SPOONBILLS & EGRETS
BACK IN THE 1970s, when I first started
birdwatching, ID was pretty
straightforward if you saw a long-legged,
long-necked bird. Bitterns were extremely
rare in the UK (and even now, how often
do you see one well?), and Spoonbills
were gone, seemingly forever, so the
Grey Heron had the field (or should that
be the marsh?) pretty much to itself.
IMAGEBROKER,ALFRED & ANNALIESE T/Imagebroker/FLPA
How things have changed. In southern England, at
least, and increasingly further north, birdwatchers
now stand a chance of seeing a whole host of
herons, egrets and similar species, and there
might well be more to come.
The pioneers
In fact, though, it’s often cited as a case of
recolonisation. Spoonbills had become largely
absent from the UK from the 17th Century
onwards, with only occasional single pairs
breeding and a handful of passage birds seen each
year, largely in the spring.
The destruction of much of their preferred
habitat, as fens and swamps were drained for
agriculture, was the main culprit for their demise,
although hunting and then egg collecting took
their toll, too.
But, in 2010, came the announcement that at
least four pairs had fledged young at Holkham
National Nature Reserve in Norfolk – the first
breeding colony for more than 300 years.
Spoonbills typically breed in single-species
colonies or, as at Holkham, in small groups within
è GLOSSY IBIS
Perhaps this will be the next
heron-like bird to colonise the UK
ê BREEDING FINERY
The ‘aigrettes’ of Little Egrets were
once highly prized, helping their
eradication from the UK
è SPOON-FED BABY
Even tiny Spoonbills have
flattened, spatulate bills!
mixed-species colonies containing other water
birds, such as Grey Herons, Little Egrets and
Cormorants, so expansion in numbers and range
can be a slow process.
Once it gathers momentum, though, it can really
take off, and as more and more Spoonbills also
winter in the UK, the potential for the Norfolk
colony to sprout outliers rapidly is great. It needs a
mixture of freshwater lakes, reedbeds, and
brackish lagoons, so will always be tied to coastal
areas, but it could benefit from plans to create
natural sea defences in many areas by means of
planned flooding and managed realignment.
It was a similar story with the Little Egret. It
was once probably common and widespread in
Britain and Ireland – they were listed among the
birds eaten at the coronation feast of Henry VI in
1429, and 1,000 were eaten at the enthronement of
George Neville as Archbishop of York in 1465.
But habitat loss, over-hunting and a cooling
climate saw them decline rapidly, so much so that
Thomas Bewick, in the first years of the 19th
Century, described them as almost extinct.
Things got worse. Egret plumes became the
must-have fashion accessory, to the extent that, in
1887, one London dealer sold two million egret
skins. Most came from the hunting of wild birds,
with disastrous effects, and by the 20th Century, it
was a bird of southern Europe only. This
catastrophe did spark a reaction, though, and in
1889, the Plumage League was formed, a
conservation organisation that would become the
RSPB we all know today.
Conservation action in continental Europe
helped the Little Egret population to grow rapidly,
until it became common in western and then
northern France, and breeding took place in the
Netherlands at the end of the 1970s. Throughout
this time, it was a rare vagrant to Britain, but
records became more and more regular, until in
1996, a pair first bred at Brownsea Island, Dorset.
26 July 2017