Twitch for the little Bittern on the Black River

We heard that people visiting the Snowy Egret on the Black River had noticed a little Bittern in the area.  Having not yet ticked this one off our list, we decided to go find and record this shy Heron.

This proved to be harder than we first thought, especially considering how easy we found the Citrine Wagtail and Snowy Egret. 

 

This took a few return visits and the help of 2 fellow twitchers, Dave Ulyate and Linda McIntosh, before we struck gold.

Dave and Linda had been searching on the banks for quite some time when we finally joined them.  After deciding to drive around the area, the Little Bittern was nowhere to be found.

We returned to the location where the Lisbeeck flows into the Black River, which is where we instinctively believed we would find our target bird, and just like we imagined it, he flew into position, showing himself clearly in the reeds.

We were extremely happy to not only tick this one off, but we managed to get a few decent pictures for our efforts. Thanks again to Dave and Linda for helping on this twitch.  It was great to meet up with fellow twitchers on the same mission with a happy ending.

This beautiful Purple Heron was also very obliging in the warm winter sun.

Puple Heron