Bird 111! Little Egret

I know 111 birds is a rubbish number, but you have to understand that I'm not really a twitcher. One day I might be. The lifestyle of a twitcher seems very determined and objective driven. It is quite attractive. But maybe for next year. Saying that though I went on my third ever successful twitch today. It was only to Watermead, but apparently there was something big and white down there that I had to see. So I went down there, not entirely sure where it would be. I meandered around looking around this lake and that until I got to my trusty kingfisher spot. I call it this because it is where I first saw a kingfisher a few year ago. A wooden wall acts as a hide and a gap in it allows you to see a shallow lake on the other side. In this lake was a moorhen and its chick, a coot and its chick and a mallard and its chick. Around the edge there were two herons. One looking at me from the other side and one very close with its back to me. Then like ornithological poetry a white angelic figure glided down and landed in the middle. A Little Egret (Egretta garzetta). Then as I clicked my camera to "on" it made the quietest little beep. The nearby heron heard this and looked around. It then saw me and took off, making the other heron take off, making the mother ducks panic. This chain reaction of duck flushing ended with my beautiful little egret taking off and flying away. Curse that heron! So I wandered around a little looking for it and then returned to the gap in the fence. Nothing. There was one last possibility. A concrete bird hide just down the way. I knew that it would be locked, it always is but the crafty birder can peer over it by standing on the door handle*. And there it was, sitting on a branch above a heron and her chicks looking glum and all fluffed up. Brilliant!

*Don't do this.