Negative birds

The Coot and Little Egret are almost negatives of each other, one is black with a white bill, the other being white with a black bill (okay, it`s not strictly black, it`s grey!). One is a very common breeder with approximately 46,000 birds present in the whole of the U.K. except the extreme north-west, the other is a fairly new arrival to our shores with less than a dozen birds being reported before 1950, but now there is thought to be about 450 breeding pairs in 11 counties in England and Wales.

Complete polar opposites.

Snow White

Little Egret

It wasn`t that long ago that the Little Egret was classed as a rarity in Britain, indeed before 1950 there had only been a dozen or so sightings of this bird. Nowadays, it is a fairly common sight and by 2002 the bird had bred in 11 counties in England and Wales. The birds numbers have gradually increased and in 2006 at least 60 colonies had been recorded with c.450 pairs.

Maxey gravel pits is my local patch and this too has its fair share of Little Egrets, although I don`t think they breed here, no signs of this have been seen as yet. There have been 7 of these birds seen regularly, both in the pits complex itself and also on the little river known as the Maxey cut. Hopefully, one day these birds will indeed breed, but until then it is a lovely sight to see these graceful white birds with feet that look as though they have walked in a pot of yellow paint!