When I looked at the local birding blog for Gloucestershire this morning I saw someone had posted some photos of a juvenile purple heron, seen well from a hide at an undisclosed location. The only purple heron I've seen was at Blenheim Palace several years back, so this would be an interesting sighting if I knew where it was! After leaving work I checked the Cotswold water park sightings for a Great Northern Diver seen recently, and then saw that the purple heron was in fact at Whelford Pools, only a few miles away! Only problem, my camera and binoculars were at home, so I frustratingly had to drive a 50 minute round trip to get them ! (But at least I could grab some lunch!)
Knowing that Whelford Nature reserve only has a small carpark, I was slightly apprehensive as to whether I would be able to park, but thankfully there were some spaces. The hide is only a very short walk from the car park and I was relieved to find that there was still a bench free from where I could see out onto the cut area of the reeds in front of the hide.
The heron had apparently been stalking amongst the reeds about an hour earlier but had flown off to the right. I had the rest of the afternoon more or less free so decided to wait and see if it returned to its regular spot. I didn't have to wait more than ten minutes before someone said 'oh that looks like a bittern...no... its the purple heron flying in!' and it landed about 10 metres away in full view of the watchers. For about five minutes it walked from left to right and back again and gave some good views, before flying off to the left and up into some trees where it remained out of sight for the next half an hour! As it didn't look likely to return I decided to call it a day.
No comments:
Post a Comment