A celebrity visits Worcestershire in the form of a Night Heron at Grimley

    

Grimley Night Herron curtsey of Adrain Sparrowhawk

For the past week or so a second calendar year Night Heron has taken up residence on the old gravel pits at Grimley just north of Worcester. I’ve seen a few in the UK over the years and so it wasn’t a drop everything and go moment but none the less these are rather spectacular herons and so I have made two visits to Grimley over the past week.

 

I should really say Black-crowned Night Heron as there are a number of species of Night Heron including the somewhat similar but much rarer Yellow-Crowned Night Heron. The latter has not been recorded in the UK but there was a long standing and much admired one last year in Southern Ireland.

 

The adult Black-Crowned night Heron is short-necked, short-legged, and stout with a primarily brown or grey plumage with, yes you guessed it, a black crown. Their eyes are a piercing red. Two or three long white plumes, erected in greeting and courtship displays, extend from their back of the head. They breed mainly in southern and south-eastern Europe and migrate across the Sahara to winter in central and west Africa. They stand still at the water's edge and wait to ambush prey, guess what again, mainly at night, a fact that can make them harder to see well during the day when they are prone to snoozing deep in the vegetation.

 

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 known successful breeding in the UK. With other members of the Heron family slowly moving north from their traditional breeding grounds in Europe perhaps it is only a matter of time before they are established breeders in the UK.

 

On my first visit the Heron was in the far eastern corner of then main pit viewable distantly from the opposite bank. As per the above it spent most of its time snoozing deep in the vegetation but did come out a couple of times allowing a few distant pics.

On my second visit it spent 4 hours buried deep in the east bank reed bed only appearing a couple of times to give me a glimpse. It has occasionally showed much better, as per the superb pic at the top of the page taken by my friend Ady from Oxfordshire.

 

So as is now very common and traditional here are a few I took earlier at Ossett 2 years ago.

  

Footnote – my blogs are posted with sometimes rather imaginative spelling and grammar due to my extreme dyslexia!