Farmhouse holiday cottages in a tranquil rural hideaway Ceredigion, West Wales.
An ideal base for exploring The Teifi Valley, Cardigan Bay and Pembrokeshire.

Great White Egret sighting West Wales

Thursday 6th of November 2014 19:17

Great White Egret sighting West Wales

This weekend we set off to use our new National Trust membership to Dinefwr to see the castle and to visit Castle Woods Nature reserve, a great spot for bird watching.

We recommend Dinefwr to all our holiday cottage guests, aside from the above is a wonderful landscaped estate and a superb period house.

The views from the castle across Carmarthenshire and the Towy Valley were stunning and we had a real bonus view from the bird watching hide in The Castle Woods nature reserve.

In the distance we spotted a large white heron like bird, alongside a heron fishing in the ox bow lake. It was a lot bigger than the heron, white and had a yellow beak.

Returning home we struggled to find it in our RSPB bird book and eventually found a match for it on the internet: A Great White Egret. Sorry for the poor quality photo, it was taken from a long way distant.

We reported our sighting to the Nature reserve manager who commented:-
"It’s a very exciting sighting- it’s a species for which I believe records are considered but the Welsh Rarities Panel. It’s a very unusual thing to see in Wales, but it has been seen here in previous winters and I’ve had one or two records from this autumn. It’s a little bit of a local celebrity to the select few that are in the know!”

Our holiday cottage guests and you, having read this, are now some the select few in the know.