I went for a walk along the Exe yesterday in Exmouth at high tide. Next to the cycle track on Mudbanks Lane is a small National Trust Farm called Lower Halsdon – in one of the fields I counted 36 Little Egrets feeding in the field. They couldn’t feed on the estuary as the tide was right in and had pushed them off into the field.
All the white blobs in this field are little egrets!
They are patiently waiting for the tide to go down so they can return to the mudflats to feed
The sheep seem undeterred!
Little egrets started to appear in the UK in 1989 having colonised the country from Western and Northern France. They first bred in 1996 in Dorset and today there are over 800 breeding birds in the country.
Climate change and its impact on wildlife in action!
A Dartmoor blog 