A great white prowls the shallows. “I don’t understand,” says a little boy on the towpath, “how its legs go so deep in the water.”
The egret draws one leg from the canal-bottom silt, winches it half a yard forward, rebalances itself, and snatches downward. Slurp, gulp. It’s fishing for tiddlers by the bank of the Leeds-Liverpool. Heron-sized and stately, a fresh-laundered white against the muggy browns and greens of high summer in Yorkshire, it proceeds at an untroubled pace, its fine tongue-tip poking just beyond the end of its banana-yellow bill, as if in concentration.
I’m fascinated by how we accommodate new species, by how quickly they grow familiar – the process by which “wow” becomes ho-hum. I remember being staggered by the first red kite I saw winnowing its forked tail in the sky over my home in north Leeds, a decade or so ago; now, they are as everyday there as jackdaws or herring gulls.
Sightings of the great white egret (Ardea alba) have been increasing steadily in the UK over the past 20-odd years. These birds are overspill, mostly, from burgeoning populations in France and the Netherlands. We are still at the “wow” stage, I think. On the towpath, a man takes snap after snap on his phone. The egret angles its kinked neck, and strikes again at the water.
An egret seen in Britain is still more likely to be a little egret (Egretta garzetta) the great white’s diminutive cousin, distinguished by its dark bill, yellow feet and footless black leggings. We get them around here a fair bit, probing the water meadows out towards Skipton, or browsing the Esholt sewage works. They’re always nice to see, but their glamour, that exotic gleam that attends a real rarity, has perhaps worn a little thin. A great white, though. That’s still something.
The little boy on the towpath is gawping as the great white starts up from the water and flaps heavily off, improbable legs trailing, head set back, down the canal.
Not long afterwards, a kingfisher zips by, a light handful of shining blue, and I think about how some species never quite lose their glamour, even though they’ve been here forever.
