Saturday 1 November 2008 - Turning The Air..... A Little Blue! - 25/10/08
Little Blue Heron in Cymru...... NOT!!!
Well what a waste of bloody time! After last night's report of juvenile LITTLE BLUE HERON in South Wales I was confident that a first for Britain would be in the bag by the end of today. Oh how wrong was I? Steve Richards and myself headed down to Carmarthenshire with fellow Midlanders Jules 'The Renegade Master' Allen and Thomas 'Poppadom' Perrins and arrived on site near Kidwelly at about 9.00am. There was no sign of the bird at this stage from either of the two viewing areas so we decided to head down towards the mouth of the Gwendraeth Estuary to see if we could relocate the bird ourselves. Luckily a hungry Perrins with his bloodhound type sense of smell managed to 'sniff out' a restaurant on a nice little caravan site that overlooked the estuary. We decided to grab a coffee and settle at this handy spot for a while until the tide came back in.
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A rare picture of 'Poppadom Perrins' without any food being consumed.
If you look closely you can see that the exciting prospect of seeing a 'first for Britain' proved all too much for Snapper Richards which led to him soiling poor Tom's anorack. Luckily all traces of 'baby batter' were removed at a later date with a quick dab of 'Stain Devil'.
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The views from the sheltered cafe were pretty good. The highlights were a small group of 6 Pale-bellied Brent Geese flying up and down the estuary as well as a marrauding Peregrine. There were also an estimated 30 Little Egrets in evidence but due to the distances involved there was no way that the American vagrant could be picked out. There were also around 30 Pintail, 20 Shelduck, 25 Eurasian Wigeon as well as a small selection of common waders which included 7 Greenshank.
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As the tide rolled in we then made our move back towards the area that the bird had been seen yesterday. There were probably around 350 to 400 birders present in the area but unfortunately the bird was not located by the end of the day. A ring-tailed Hen Harrier was nice to see and an escaped Snow Goose at least gave us something nearctic to look at but it was all obviously a bit disappointing after what might have been. No doubt the 'mick tickers' that travelled over to Ireland earlier on in the month had a wry smile on their smug little faces as the negative news filtered through.
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Real birders obviously take field craft very seriously..... but some don't. Notice how 'Captain Pugwash' here blends in with the dark shades of the nearby hawthorn bush. A quick glimpse of this and any self-respecting Little Blue Heron would take cover in the nearest creek!
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