Big, blue, and over here…
By Charlie • December 14, 2007 • 1 commentThe UK has just recorded its first Great Blue Heron Ardea herodias, a juvenile discovered on the afternoon of Dec 7th on Lower Moors pools, St Mary’s (Isles of Scilly): it showed well until dusk but disappeared overnight. The Great Blue is thought to have arrived on a deep Atlantic depression, and although 19 have been recorded on the Azores the species still remains a very rare vagrant elsewhere in the Western Palearctic. The sighting made the national media - even the redtop rag The Sun posted a photo on their website.
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[...] A survey by The Independent on Sunday of data supplied by Birdwatch magazine shows that the past year has been the most remarkable one for sightings in decades. Normally, one or two bird species appear for the first time over Britain, but in the past 12 months, there have been six: a Pacific diver in Yorkshire, glaucous-winged gull in Gloucestershire and Wales, long-billed murrelet in Devon, yellow-nosed albatross in Somerset and Lincolnshire, masked booby off Portland in Dorset, and, this month, a great blue heron blown into the Scillies by a strong westerly weather system. The result is that the list of birds recorded in Britain – which, at 577, is the longest in Europe – is now even more impressive. [...]