ISLEWORTH’S LITTLE EGRETS Photographs and drawings by Les McCallum
ISLEWORTH’S
Little Egrets Birdwatcher and artist Les McCallum is happy to see Little Egrets making their home near his Being a keen birdwatcher I am used to friends and neighbours asking me to identify the bird they have just seen. We normally manage to work it out. Lately, quite few people have been saying “I’ve just seen a young heron” on the Thames foreshore in Isleworth, describing it as small and completely white. Straight away that brief outline of colour, size and location tells me it was a Little Egret and not a juvenile Grey Heron, but they could be excused for getting the identification wrong as Little Egrets are a recent addition to our UK wildlife and wouldn’t be found in most people’s bird guides. My first sighting was some 30 years ago in 1989, while filming a BBC Timewatch documentary on Lundy Island [about Napoleon in exile on Helena Island.] Standing by the cliff top, a large white bird with trailing legs and yellow feet flew along the shoreline. I couldn’t believe it. At the time they were very rare visitors to the UK. I rushed to tell the warden who was coming along on a quad bike and waved him down. He
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looked at me in disbelief and told me I was mistaken; the last one seen on the Island was 100 years before. It was shot and now resides under a glass dome on the bar of the pub. The next day the egret paraded himself for all to see on the small landing beach.
Population wiped out in Victorian times They were so numerous in the Middle Ages that there is on record a banquet menu for a newly appointed bishop listing 1,000 egrets plus other birds such as bittern and partridge. It appears they were extremely common, but with the draining of marshes they rapidly declined. The final straw began with the ‘Plume trade’. In the 1800s they were slaughtered in their thousands for their beautiful long feathers and they gradually disappeared from this country, only to be found in a small area of Southern France. At one stage the neck feather or plumes of breeding adults were more valuable per ounce than gold.
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