Along the Royal Military canal today I saw lots of twitchers with cameras with the most enormous lenses. They told me that a Green Heron had been seen very near by. This is a very rare visitor to the country and indeed has not been recorded in Kent before.
Although I didn’t see the bird, here is a picture of what a Green Heron looks like. BBC News release about Green Heron
We do encourage wild birds to visit the cottage gardens. We have many blue and great tits, gold and green finches, siskins, yellow hammers, spotted and green woodpeckers amongst others. We do have a Heron regularly visiting the duck pond – unfortunately it isn’t a green one!
Elmfield is only 10 minutes from the Royal Military Canal – where the green heron was seen. The Dunganess Nature reserve is less than half an hour from here and has many unusual birds including 2 Marsh Harriers. These fledged at the nature reserve where improvements to their wetland habitat has attracted these rare birds.
