Colourful
creatures are moving north from Europe into a warming Britain … but indigenous
rivals risk being lost for ever
Sat 29
Jun 2019 12.00 BSTLast modified on Sat 29 Jun
2019 17.25 BST
Cattle
egrets – birds once so exotic we rarely saw them north of the Mediterranean –
are now nesting in a heronry near my home in Somerset. Flocks of them often
gather in the nearby fields, feeding among Jerseys and Holsteins. They look as
if they are quite at home on this side of the Channel – which nowadays they
are.
These
small white herons, adorned with their orange breeding-plumes, are just one of
several species of waterbird to have colonised southern Britain in the past
decade or so, as a result of the climate crisis. These include the little
egret, which has bred here since the mid-90s, and the great white egret, which
first nested on the Avalon Marshes less than a decade ago.
Egrets
are hard to ignore: even people who have little or no interest in birds are
beginning to notice these elegant white birds in our midst. But meanwhile, a
whole suite of wild creatures is colonising Britain by stealth; sometimes
passing under the radar until they have established thriving populations here.
