01 May Long way from home – again

Following the late March appearance of the first Crested Caracara ever sighted in Nova Scotia, another rare avian visitor has turned up in Metro:

The Little Egret is an Old World bird similar to North America’s Snowy Egret (which itself rarely ventures farther up the Atlantic coastline than Massachusetts). Its European counterpart is a “very rare” visitor to North America, with occasional scattered reports from Newfoundland to Virginia.

First sighted on April 21 in a pond along the Shore Road Eastern Passage, the Little Egret was feeding actively but to some observers appeared not “all that healthy.” JBD took the photo above on Saturday, but the Nova Scotia Bird Society has reported no sightings since. Perhaps it moved on, or accepted some other critter’s invitation to dinner.