Last week we had a rather special and rare visitor to the Lower Derwent Valley NNR in the form of a Squacco Heron. Squacco Herons are small brown herons, weighing in at just 270-390g (compared with 1020-2073g for a Grey Heron), and are smaller than our now regularly encountered Little Egrets. They are stunning looking birds with a mix of peach, buff and cinnamon coloured plumage, with white wings when seen in flight and long black-edged plumes on their head.
Squacco Herons are usually found breeding in wetlands in
southern Europe and western, eastern and southern Africa, with them being a
rare visitor to the UK with less than 300 national records, and an even scarcer
visitor to Yorkshire with little more than a dozen county occurrences. This
individual is presumably the same bird seen last week at Filey Dams and in the
Upper Derwent Catchment around Potter Brompton, before it headed further
downstream along the River Derwent. After a couple of hours at Bank Island the
bird then relocated to North Duffield Carrs where it is still present today.
This is the first record of this species for the reserve and has drawn a steady
crowd of admirers - thanks to eagle-eyed #LDV
volunteer Mal Richardson for spotting it, and to local patch birder Duncan Bye
for the image below.
.jpg)
