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???