I wasn’t even properly up and about this morning when a Messenger call came in from my current friend Richard (I may yet have to expel him from the Circle of Trust, for being insufferably good with a camera) – but I wasn’t sure if it was a voice or a video call, and because I was embarrassed about the possibility of being seen in my nightshirt, I let it ring out. A couple of minutes later a message appeared: 5 Glossy Ibis at Croome Lake.
Tuesday motivation: twenty minutes later I was in the car, and within an hour of getting the message I was walking out onto the lake surround. A couple of people I’d already met on site had told me that the birds were very mobile – one of the reception staff reported a photographer saying that he’d had to chase them all round the lake – but my previous, limited, experience of them had suggested to me that Glossy Ibis aren’t especially worried about humans provided you give them space, and that was my experience today as well.
By the time I arrived there were just four birds feeding in the mud at the edge of the lake (though I can’t discount the possibility of a fifth one having moved out onto the ‘river’), and to my inexpert eye they looked like a family group of two adults and two juveniles. This is one of the two smaller birds, and based on the fact that it shows no trace of the deep chestnut plumage that adults acquire during the breeding season, and lacks a clear line of bare skin defining the base of its bill, I’m going to stick my neck out and say that it’s a juvenile.
Unsurprisingly there was quite a lot of interest in these unusual birds among the day’s visitors to Croome, even before word of their presence began to spread locally, bringing in a little influx of Ibis-seekers. Several people said “I thought they’d be bigger!”, which was exactly what I remember saying myself when I first saw one – I’d expected a bird the size of an Egret, but instead what I got was something far more like a Curlew. In fact, the Curlew comparison isn’t a bad one, leaving aside the long curved bill, because in terms of length and wingspan they’re pretty similar, though Curlews are quite a bit heavier in the body.
Over the past three weeks there has been a big influx of Glossy Ibis into the UK from the Continent, for reasons that remain unclear. But as the Bird Guides article makes clear, the breeding population in Spain and southern France has exploded over the past few years, and with the weather in those areas becoming increasingly hot and dry, it’s possible that they’re having to push further and further north in order to find better feeding sites. Most of our unexpected guests will probably fly south again when the weather here turns colder, but it’s likely that some will stay, especially if we have a mild winter. The last time I was at RSPB Ham Wall in Somerset, one of the volunteers told me that they believe Glossy Ibis are now resident there all year round, so it’s surely only a matter of time before sightings like this are too common to attract much general interest.
