The green, green grass of home

On my last post I commented about missing birds and how the green heron from 2008 really hurt. I wrote that before looking at RBA on Saturday night when, in totally bizarre coincidence, a green heron dropped into a garden in Wales! This was something you could not have predicted. Sunday it was still there and so there was only one decision to be made on Monday. Jut after 5 I was making my way along the motorway towards south Wales. The bird was some way down, almost at Martins Haven, where you leave for Skomer and the puffins, but that is a trip for another day. I got to the village of Llan Mill just before 9 and parked up at the crematorium. The village is tiny, barely a dozen cottages on a very windy road so this was the recommended place to park. A 10 minute walk down the road and 5 minutes along a track got me to a very nice house. It belongs to the local MP Simon Hart who put the news out and was welcoming all-comers to view the heron.

It was one of the nicer places for a twitch. You stood on his terrace, where his wife brought out tea and coffee, and studied the pond he has in his rather picturesque garden.

When I arrived there were about 20 people there including Lee Evans. The heron had been seen but was lurking in the reeds on the opposite side of the pond. Fortunately I got onto it almost immediately but for the next hour the views were, how to put it, fleeting at best.

The green heron has its natural home in north and central Americas. It has clearly got quite lost in one of the Atlantic storms and pitched up here. It was loving it in this pond and patch of reeds though, catching small frogs, fish and quite frequently newts. It would pounce on them, spearing the larger ones and taking them back into deeper cover to eat them.

It was giving us tantalising views but not enough to really show itself off. It is a small heron, like a night heron rather than our grey heron, so could totally disappear very easily. The general feeling, especially from Mr Evans, was that the day before it had been pestered a bit too much. Certainly when it did show the cameras went off a bit loud and not everyone realised there is a silent setting. Finally though we saw it starting to make its way through the reeds towards the front of the bed. 

It seemed a bit confused it the beautiful sunlight. It was stunning to see it finally on show though. The colours in its plumage really sang. Despite it being out and on show, there was only a narrow angle you could see it well from. Move slightly sideways and trees or reeds started to obscure it. I had to fight to keep my place and people even started to move in front of those already there. This resulted in a bit of grumbling with lots of photos being taken of hats as those in front stood up. One bloke in particular was a right pain. He had got a place in the front and refused to either kneel down, take his hat off or stop spreading his elbows out when he took a photo. Fortunately I could edge slightly to one side to avoid him but I heard lots of pointed comments from others. 

Firstly it had a really good groom of its feathers, stretching out its wings and making sure everything was clean and in working order.

Once all that was done it started looking around a bit more. It did one strange thing, opening its beak and appearing to yawn. I wasn't sure what it was doing - clearing its crop a bit but the view down its throat was certainly very unusual. 

Apparently the strange "organ"coming out of its mouth is actually its throat. When it sits still it has an apparently quite short neck. 

It uses this neck though as a telescope to reach out and catch food and you could see sometimes when it stretched how long it is. That organ is actually the throat folded away in its neck so I presume after a bit of sitting it has to stretch it to get the kinks out!!!!

Finally it seemed distracted by something, possibly even listening for prey moving in the reeds and it skulked back off out of sight again.

I hung around for another half hour but with a long drive back I eventually called it a day and headed home. Superb bird, great twitch and my third lifer in the space of 7 days. This is turning into a pretty good Spring after a slow start. Now, what might be next???

Those Yanks coming over here....

If a rare bird decides to visit our shores it is normally best to drop everything and go for it straight away. There is no guarantee they will stay for a day, couple of days, week or month. The longer you leave it the more likely you are to "dip" on the bird or go to see it on the day after it departed. I've done this in the past, with the green heron from 2008 being the one that hurts most. It stayed from the 19th of October to the 9th of November and I went for it on the 10th of November!!! Lesson learned but force majeure often means you can't get away. This was the case with the American bittern which was first seen on the 7th April in Suffolk. Initially it was very elusive with stories of people spending whole days waiting to see it or having very brief 10 second flight views. That and planning days when I could get away meant that by the 26th April I still hadn't seen it. It is very rare here although there have been 37 sightings in the UK before this one. Finally about a week ago it started to play ball, and developed a pattern where it was seen for extended periods feeding in the late afternoon. So, when a work meeting finished earlier than expected I dived into the car at lunchtime and set off for Suffolk.
The site was Carlton marshes, north of Minsmere and just inland from Lowestoft. I'd never been there before but there were a few other birders around when I got into the car park about 3.15. One had been to see it before and was coming back for a second bite so I joined him on the 20 minute walk to the viewing area. Apparently he had left his wife at the top of the road waiting for a bus to go shopping in Lowestoft. I'll come back to him later though.

This was the ditch where it often showed late in the day in an area next to the reedbed.

For about an hour the assembled horde, roughly 40 or 50 strong I suppose, staked out this area of the marsh, spread out along a 100 yard front. Apart from a marsh harrier and a yellow wagtail there was no sign of anything interesting though. Finally a bloke standing near to me shouted out "in flight, behind the willow tree". That of course is not much use in a large marsh - which trees?? By the time he explained where, it had dropped out of sight roughly 200 yards away. The throng gathered up their 'scopes and yomped to this new area to spend another 30 minutes staring at a bird-free marsh! It had to be there somewhere but where? Bitterns are notoriously skulky and tend to prefer walking to flying so can disappear for long periods of time even when you know where they are. Gradually we started to disperse, some back to the first area, others further along the marsh to a raised river bank. I noticed a small group of 4, one of whom was my mate from earlier with the wife in Lowestoft, up on the bank. They were staring intently through their 'scopes at something. They were still doing it two minutes later. I alerted those immediately near me and we agree they were on something and we weren't. About 4 of us moved and that started the rush. Suddenly there was a mass stampede starting as we realised they must be on it.

As we got close there were about a dozen or so gathered on the bank. They pointed to a ditch in front of them and told us to look on the left hand side.

As you can see it is some way away and not exactly open ground. Within a few seconds though I had a bird in the weedy margins poking its head out: the bittern had given itself up!!!!!

It is in the photo above doing what bitterns often do - being very hard to see. For about 30 minutes it worked its way along the ditch finding lot to eat in the water margins, sometimes showing itself quite well albeit distantly.

There is no difficulty telling it apart from our Eurasian bittern- apart from subtle things like a longer beak it is a humbug of a bird with gorgeous stripes on its belly and flank. It gradually came a bit closer but always hugged the bank. For context these photos are with a 500mm and a 1.4 or 2x converter and heavily cropped!!

By now the crowd had swelled as all the birders had got the message and moved to where we were. I was still with my mate from earlier, who had now been joined by his wife who wasn't very happy. Apparently no bus came to take her shopping so she made the best of a bad job and joined us twitching. It took her ages to find it in her husbands 'scope and she likened the bird to an old man, which no one really understood.

It feeds quite unlike our bittern. Instead of waiting and pouncing it was marching up and down the bank spearing into the water when it saw a delicate morsel. Too far way to see what it was eating but it seemed pretty successful, presumably that being the reason it has stayed so long.
My mate was on the phone by now. He had alerted a nearby friend who was trying to get to us. The walk was over 30 minutes now from the car park and not straight forward. He was trying to give directions but his friend was clearly lost. The bird as well was walking away from us and risked going out of sight round a bend in the stream.

In the end we could see his friend about 4 or 5 hundred yards away and he was told to run as it was really close to disappearing. His wife, who was clearly not a bird watcher chirped up with "well, its not the end of the world if he doesn't make it". The 10 birders nearby, who had been following the saga went quiet. He said to his wife in a sotto voce way "actually, it is"!! He finally made it just in time to see the bittern before it kept walking away from us.
It was now almost 6 and I was 3 hours from home so I, and to be fair most of the others, started the trek back to the car park. Very happy with that. A mega life tick and all things considered good views. As a post script though, after I left it did relocate back to the first area we were in and gave the late comers stunning views down to 30 yards. If it stays I may have to go back for another bite, it is a stunning bird.