Great White Mystery

For big white birds egrets can't half be elusive. Er, assuming they're present, of course. Following the return of a Great White Egret in November it was disappointing there was no sign of it in either November or December.

Imagine my surprise when TWO were together between Kelk Beck and Wansford on Sunday. Note that two together is not unprecedented - November 2015 (photo).

It's interesting to speculate where these bird have been all winter.

Option 1: they've been here all the time but hidden. Entirely possible, given their habitat preference for drainage channels of which there are many out of sight across the area. That said, much like Little Egrets, they seem to move about a fair bit so I'm surprised I wouldn't have encountered one of them flying somewhere.

Option 2: they have been spending only some of the time here. There have been sightings earlier this month of single birds at Hornsea (8th) and Tophill (2nd), in addition to sightings at several places going back to autumn. That means there's either several locally or just a couple moving about. The latter seems the most feasible explanation. With sightings a little further away at North Cave Wetlands and Spurn it's possible they range very widely all winter (I'm not convinced) or there have been 3-5 birds in the county.

Option 3: there have been three birds passing through this winter, one on November and these two. This suggests either a) I have extraordinary good luck to pick the right days or b) many have passed through. I don't buy either reasoning!

Anyway, here they are. Very distant photos, but identifiable.

Bird 1 - flew with bird 2 but separated and carried on flying along a drain until out of sight.

Bird 2, dropped into this drainage channel but eventually waded around the corner out of sight.

A Little Egret appeared, conveniently demonstrating the size difference.

More from the weekend to follow...