With many apologies to Patti Smith!
My youthful years, as defined by pre early 30’s when I started my family, are anchored in my memory by what music I was listening to and who my girlfriend was at the time. When I was researching for my doctorate way back when I was 21 to 24 the unfortunate lady was called Tessa who introduced me to the music of Patti Smith via her first and iconic album “Horses”.
Here she is singing “Because the Night” on the Old Grey Whistle Test which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OjW1TDANxk
She is often described as being instrumental in the mid 70’s New York punk movement although her music differs greatly from the great UK punk bands circa 1977, e.g. The Clash and the Sex Pistols.
Anyway back to birding!
A small influx of Black-crowned Night Herons has occurred in recent days with reports of up to 5 together at the same site. They breed mainly in southern and south-eastern Europe and migrate across the Sahara to winter in central and west Africa. In a typical year one or two overshoot during spring migration and end up in the UK.
In the spring of 2017 a pair were found at Westhay Moor in Somerset. A couple of months later juvenile birds appeared with them, unbeknown to anyone they had bred locally, the first know successful breeding in the UK. With at least 10 birds currently presently in the UK including several pairs, it would be a brave man indeed who bets against them breeding here again this year.
They are truly visually stunning birds. Adults have a black crown and back with the remainder of the body white or grey, red eyes, and short yellow legs. They have pale grey wings and white under parts. Two or three long white plumes, erected in greeting and courtship displays, extend from their back of the head. Their habit of sitting erect and still while fishing on the riverbank also makes them very photogenic.
Given that I’ve seen Night Herons in the UK before and had just had what will almost certainly be dip of the year via missing a Forster’s Tern by 2 minutes, I wasn’t particularly motivated to do another long birding drive.
My motivation came back when my good friend Nick posted some lovely pictures of 2 birds at Ossett near Leeds online, see here. So with at least semi reasonable weather forecast for Thursday I set out on the 140 mile mainly motorway drive to Ossett. As I drove north the sunny weather deteriorated and by the time I got to Ossett it was very windy with intermittent rain showers – not very promising. The birds were located a short walk from a small car park along the bank of the river Cader. A farmer, I guess fed up with motor bikes, had blocked the path at one point with an old tanker leaving an extremely narrow gap to squeeze through. On the other side of this obstacle I could see a small number of birders looking at the opposite bank some 200 meters along the path.
When I got to them I learned that the herons were roosting deep within the trees, wisely it seemed to me keeping out of the inclement weather. I learned that they had both been fishing on the bank at first light but had then moved into cover, they are Night Herons after all! The water level was very high from all the recent rain and the wash off from the surrounding land had make the water very silty and murky, not very promising for Night Heron fishing it would seem. It has to be said that it was also not the most scenic of settings with lots of plastic rubbish caught up in eddies along the bank. They stayed deep in cover from the next 2 hours and things were looking very unpromising when one of the birds moved to the front of the vegetation, flew a short distance upriver and then perched out in the open in typical rigid Heron fishing stance. Here it stayed for maybe 5 minutes before it dropped down onto a raft of rotting vegetation and rubbish and continued to look for fish. After a further 10 minutes it decided that it had had enough of this seemingly fruitless endeavour and made its way back into the trees. As far as I’m aware they did not reappear for the rest of the day.
Walking back along the bank I stopped to watch a pair of smart looking Goosanders battling the strong water flow. I learned later that they had chicks but they must have been well concealed while I was there.
I drove home in a good mood, so grateful that one of the Night Herons had put in a proper appearance, without that it would have been a damp day both physically and mentally.
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