I can see a single yellow leg... Night Heron and Black-necked Grebes


This was a week off birding.  I know, it surprised me too.  But I've been feeling a bit burned out, and so I turned my attention to other hobbies.  The whisky group reconvened for the first time in 2025 (and that was a source of some stress for a while), and friends returned from working in Kuwait with Cuban gifts.  The whole whisky and cigars thing isn't generally conducive to the life of a birder, with the best of those experiences occurring late at night in the summer heat - and no way I'm making a 4am start to see the best of the bird life after that.  So I planned to indulge the water of life and the craftsmanship of tobacco, and have a break from birds.

I was tenderly nursing the neck out of a bottle of Cardhu 16 when I saw the news of Black-crowned Night Heron, Caspian Tern and White-rumped Sandpiper in the north east and Musselburgh.  For a tense moment I thought about stopping the whisky and smoke, but then good sense prevailed and the neck became the shoulders, (and perhaps a glimpse of the décotellage of the bottle if I'm writing in the spirit of honesty) leaving me in no fit state to be anywhere for a day or so.  I missed the Caspian Tern and WRS, but sometimes you have to reprioritise, and what I needed at that time was at home rather than abroad.  But the miss weighed on me.  I love Night Herons - my experience with them in the UK has been slightly misleading in that I saw two adults sitting in the open in broad daylight on the River Ossett in April 2023 and assumed that all sightings of them were like this.  Every bird I've seen since has been a glimpse of red eye in the depths of a reedbed or a shadowy flyby at dusk with all the details washed out.



So when a second Night Heron appeared at Grimley in Worcestershire a day or so after that, I felt I had to travel to see it.  50 miles closer than the bird in Northumberland meant that it would be an hour each way quicker.  Except of course, this was travelling south, and once you venture past Manchester on the motorway it's a godforsaken mess of broken roads and appalling traffic, even after 10am in the midweek.  A little rain didn't help, and the longer it took me to arrive and find the location of the bird, the less chance of a good view there would be given Night Herons and their day time reticence.

In fact, I would never have seen the bird at all if it hadn't been for Andy Stockhausen being an all-round good guy and waiting patiently for two hours for me to arrive, keeping his scope on the bird.  As I walked across to meet Andy in person for the first time he told me if I'd been ten minutes earlier it had been showing so well... as it was, he said, "Well, I can see a single yellow leg... follow that and you'll get your eye on the beak and the red eye."  Eventually I did, and even took some photos of the location - not that the grey lump proves it's anything.  Could be a Woodpigeon.  Could be anything if you squint hard enough.  


But an hour later and the Heron had only moved to preen sullenly, and had slumped lower into the confluence of dead branches across the water.  A disappointing view, but excellent to meet Andy; for a good part of this year he has been an encouragement and source of advice and wisdom for me on matters birding and beyond, and it was a pleasure to meet him and compare notes on where to aim in the remains of the summer and with autumn in mind.


The rest of the week was back to the main plan - rest, recharge the batteries, get to the gym.  But I had an itch to get out with my camera.  Testing an R7 with the 200-800mm lens but deciding I can't wisely afford it at the moment meant I'd been in a bit of an unfair sulk with my old 7d2 with the 400mm lens, and hadn't even really thought about using it.  Like drinking instant coffee after a couple of days mainlining French roast. The report of some local Black-necked Grebes was enough to get me back on speaking terms with my old camera, and I spent a few hours at Pennington Flash not seeing any and then at High Rid in Bolton seeing two very close up.  These juveniles probably come from Woolston Eyes (though there are suppressed breeding grounds elsewhere locally) and though I love seeing the summer plumaged adults on their breeding grounds, the more confiding juveniles will come much closer and allow me to become more familiar with their shape, and calls, and their overall habits.

So I have indulged myself, had a break, and made friends with my camera.  I booked my day trip to St Mary's and my overnight camping for a couple of days sea-watching on the tip of Cornwall.  It's done me good and I feel ready to get back out there and see some wildlife.

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