And there was me thinking I'd seen something odd and uncommon! ;)
Still a nice thing to see I think - something I may not see again in Britain.
Thanks to all for info
For results of the long running German study of grey herons see: http://www.proring.de/projekt_graureiher.html Regular movements to Spain, North and West Africa.
In 1994 a Grey Heron was caught alive in a fisherman's nets on the River Gambia, West Africa and bearing a leg ring it was found to have been ringed as a young bird at a large heronry on the Greater Manchester mosslands. The bird was kept in captivity for about a week before being released on a nature reserve near Banjul and became the first British record to have been recovered south of the Sahara and had moved 4560 kilometres south-south-west from it's birthplace in order to reach it's destination.
I was at Spurn yesterday and saw a flock of large birds (10-12 individuals) flying over the sea. They were quite distant but coming towards me and as the cam e closer it became apparent that they were grey herons. They were flying high as though migrating and I wondered if anyone had had any experience of migrating grey herons. Of course they could have been blown off, say, Flamborough Head and then blown in to Spurn by the (extremely strong) Easterlies but it certainly appeared as though they had come in off the sea from Scandinavia or somewhere in Eastern Europe.
Does anyone know of anything like this happening, as I have always though of grey herons as mainly sedentary? One thing to note is that, even at that height, they seemed to be mostly juvs.
