Purple Heron

 

You wait ten years to see a Purple Heron in this country, then they all turn up at once. Well nearly all at once. One last year at Burton Mill Pond and one this year at Pagham, both October birds.

The two experiences, however, were completely different. The Burton Mill Pond bird spent the day deep in the reeds, only showing itself when it flew into the trees to roost under cover of almost complete darkness. The Pagham bird favoured an open field with little cover and seemed quite happy and surprisingly successful foraging out in the open.

The bird had been around for a week or so favouring a field at the end of Summer Lane in Pagham. The only difficulties, were that it did not seem to have any regular pattern to its visits and it was also subject to frequent disturbance from locals and visiting observers.

My first visit to see it was on the Monday morning when I arrived to be told that it had just been flushed by a dog walker crossing the field. I waited around for a couple of hours but left without seeing it. Apparently it did return but not until late afternoon.

Wednesday I picked up Dave and we headed along the coast to Pagham for another look. You've guessed it, we arrived to be told that it had just been flushed by a photographer getting too close. Fortunately we both had the cameras packed away in the rucksacks and were able to wave the bins around like the good birders we are.

We had a walk down the rife towards the harbour to check out a few of the other fields but were fortunate to arrive back close to the original spot just as the heron made an appearance. Once again it landed in the open field and immediately started feeding.

With regular disturbance and lots of people visiting to see it, the bird had probably developed a degree of tolerance to people being close. Put that along side its success in finding food and the fact that it had chosen to land reasonably close to us, meant that it did not seem at all concerned by our presence. We watched for about 45 minutes until it worked its way across the field and into the cover of a reed bed.

The heron showed well at times but was well camouflaged when moving through the longer grass and difficult to see when looking straight into the lens. The shot below being typical of a lot of the views that we had.

My only regret, the camera was till safely packed away in the rucksack when the bird flew in. Bad mistake, I missed some good flight shots.