It’s no secret – summers in the Wheatbelt of Western Australia can be brutal. Most sensible people try to get at least a few days down on the coast as respite. We’re no different and we headed off to the Peel Inlet. Unfortunately the hot weather followed us there so on our first evening desperate to get some evening cool breeze I went looking for Eastern Ospreys at a known nesting site. With no Ospreys to be seen I carried on walking until I got to Samphire Cove Nature Reserve. Just as you go in there is a bird hide – now I’m not a great user of bird hides as I find them very uncomfortable. The observation windows are generally very low down and they have a fixed bench in front of them a bit to far away. This means I end up looking like a pretzel while trying to use them. As I walked closer to the hide to see if there was anything worth photographing I saw a Great Egret (Ardea alba) fishing just a couple of metres in front of the hide. This was going to be tricky – getting into the hide without frightening the bird away as the Great Egret is a very flighty bird. As the bird was quite engrossed in fishing I decided to move while it tried to catch a fish and remain still when it was looking around. It took ten minutes to cover the 25m to the hide. 

 

 

 

This was the closest I’ve ever been to a Great Egret and it was presenting a problem because my lens was too long. It is very rare that this happens, normally you can’t have too long a lens. The fish were jumping a little further out so the Egret slowly walked out further into the water. I was quite surprised at how many fish the bird was eating. Slowly the sun began to set and just as the last rays of light were hitting the water the Great Egret took off in search of a roost. I’d been there an hour and I’d forgotten the heat and was totally oblivious to the discomfort of using the hide.  A magical experience.