Spring is on the way and it’s time to start keeping an eye out for the migratory birds. I took the Mega-Tamron out for a walk, I knew that there were swans in the open water in Ljusnedalssjön. I found two pairs of swans, a bit sad that there were no young birds, but then I saw a fifth swan alone on the right and trained my lens on that. And found that it was not a swan – it was an egret! How exciting was that, on a scale! I saw a heron last year, it flew over me and I assumed it was a grey heron because it’s the most common of the herons here. And before that, I’ve only ever seen one other heron (grey) in Sweden.

But this one is not grey… it’s most definitely a white one, a great egret (Egretta alba) to be specific! My bird guide (from 2007)  says that there are about 20 great egret observations in Sweden every year, while Wikipedia doesn’t go into such specifics but indicates that the numbers are growing. There is one confirmed nesting in Sweden so far. But whatever way you look at it, I reckon this is the rarest bird on my very short list of bird sightings! And at the moment I’m probably the only one who has seen this bird here, because I didn’t see any footprints in the snow in either of the spots where the bird is visible. You can’t see it from the road, and I only found it because I wanted to get a picture of those swans. Lucky!

There is a ring on the egret but even 900mm was not enough to see the details. Speaking of 900mm, this was the first time I used the Mega-Tamron on the Sony A6300 since I upgraded the adapter firmware. It worked great so I don’t need to regret selling the Canon!