Cattle Egrets!

Cattle Egret, Colyton, January 2017 (Copyright T D Wright)

With the rain almost incessant just now and even worse forecast for the rest of the week I decided to cycle along the road to Tritchayne just to check on the Cattle Egret at Colcombe farm. Its field was very full of birds so I decided to scan it carefully with the old Kowa 'blunderbuss'. Immediately, I picked up 'the bird' or so I thought. Right behind it was another! Yes, I thought. It's finally been joined by that Chard bird. I continued to scan across 200 BH Gulls, 20 Common Gulls, 24 Herring Gulls, 30 Pied Wags, 2 Grey Wags, myriad corvids and then, at the opposite end of the field, the 2 Cattle Egrets hove back into view. "Oh, they must have flown across whilst I had my eye to my scope" I thought. Just to make sure, I swung my battered and weather-beaten old lens-machine with my battered and weather-beaten old limbs back to 'Square One'. Flaming Heck, I exclaimed; and persisted in repeating a double-take until I was satisfied that there definitely were no less than FOUR Cattle Egrets in the one field. Where they all came from is open to much speculation. Channel Islands? Teigngrace? Hampshire? Who cares?! We've now got Cattle Egrets (plural) at Colcombe Farm...