Little Egret goes south for the winter

With the increase of Little Egrets in the UK more and more birds are being ringed. One regular site in Norfolk that also adds colour rings is resulting in a growing number of recoveries through sightings.

So far there hasn’t been much movement between countries, with only 1 foreign ringed bird from The Netherlands to the UK and three British ringed birds being found abroad (1 to Netherlands, 1 to Channel Islands and 1 to Spain).

We have just heard of one of these Norfolk birds have been found near Pasaxe de Pedrido, Galicia. Unfortunately this bird was dead but much more noticeable with the colour rings. This is a distance of 1227km in 244 days, which beats the previous furthest Little Egret movement of 910km to Irun, San Sabastian, Spain!

This is a brilliant movement and with more birds being colour ringed there is a lot of potential to make a big difference to our understanding of Little Egret movements, just like Xakobe Gandara did, who found this bird. Thanks go to him for letting us know and the use of his pictures. I am especially grateful, as I was the one who ringed this bird!

Lee Barber