Little Egret Colonisation
Reports
In 2025, Little Egret was recorded on Arran in every month of the year for the first time.
The first Arran record was a single bird on Sliddery Shore on 1 July 2013. It did not linger. The second record was four years later in 2017, and this bird lingered from Friday 4 August to Monday 7 August mainly in Sandbraes. There were only post-breeding autumn records up to and including 2019. Little Egret started to over winter in 2020-2021 with records from November through to February and that has continued. Spring records began to build with records to April in 2021, to May in 2022 and in 2023 and to June in 2024. In 2025 for the first time there were Little Egret records in every month of the year.
In line with this expansion through the year, the number of reports has built up. In 2020 there were twenty reports, in 2021 there were seventy-four reports, in 2023 there were one hundred and thirty-seven reports and in 2025 there were three hundred and sixty four reports. Since the first report there have been over one thousand reports from around one hundred and fifty locations on Arran.
Initially reports were of single birds. In 2019 there were two reports of two birds together out of 28 reports. The first report of two birds together was at Rubha Salach on 12 October in 2019. Three years later in 2022 there were two reports of three birds together out of 137 reports. (Eight of these reports were of two birds together.) . The first report of three birds together was on Sliddery Shore on 9 September 2022. It was a further three years before reports of more than three birds were received. In 2025 there were three hundred and sixty-four reports of which seventy-seven were of more than a single bird including three of eight birds together, two of seven, two of six, five of five and five of four. The first report of eight birds together was in Cordon on 13 October 2025 and the first report of seven birds together was a group flying off Pirnmill on 16 October 2025.
Little Egret used to be a rare bird in the UK. Following an expansion across Europe, Little Egret first appeared in the UK in significant numbers in 1989 and first bred in Dorset in 1996. In Ireland it first bred in 1997, the first in Wales was 2002, and the first breeding record in Scotland was as recent as 2020 and that was in Dumfries and Galloway. To date there have only been four confirmed breeding records in Scotland. No confirmed breeding records on Arran yet. Will 2026 be the year that Little Egret join our resident Grey Heron in one of our heronries as a breeding species on Arran? Time will tell.
