Handsome bird, so egret to please

IS it to be another invasion of egrets, this time the cattle egret, a small, white heron, not quite as pretty as its cousin, the now familiar little egret, but pretty nonetheless?

Every time I go walking along coasts or river banks of west Cork, I see little egrets. One recent Sunday, we walked the circuit of Inchydoney Island —famous for Fianna Fáil conference-men in suits posing for photos on windy beaches — and saw five little egrets standing in a lagoon.

In the early 1990s, they began to arrive in increasing numbers from France and the Netherlands and established a breeding colony on the Blackwater outside Youghal in 1997. Since then, the species has established new colonies at sites on the west Cork coast and elsewhere.