Winterwatch 2022 episode 3: The days may be shorter and the nights longer, but winter is far from a season of slumber. In Northern Ireland, Megan McCubbin takes a look inside an egret roost after dark, revealing a world we rarely get to see. Norfolk is putting on a show of its own at Wild Ken Hill, where the wading marsh is awash with action. Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan bring us its winter highlights. Over on the Isle of Mull, Iolo Williams is banking on some hungry winter dinner guests. A golden eagle wouldn’t be too much to ask, would it?
Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Winterwatch, sometimes known collectively as The Watches, are annual BBC television series which chart the fortunes of British wildlife during the changing of the seasons in the United Kingdom. The programmes are broadcast live from locations around the country in a primetime evening slot on BBC Two. They require a crew of 100 and over 50 cameras, making them the BBC’s largest British outside broadcast events. Many of the cameras are hidden and operated remotely to record natural behaviour, for example, of birds in their nests and badgers outside their sett.
Springwatch begins on the Spring Bank Holiday and is broadcast four nights each week for three weeks. After the success of the first Springwatch in 2005, the BBC commissioned a one-off special, Autumnwatch, which became a full series in 2006. Winterwatch began in 2012, broadcast in January or February.
Winterwatch 2022 episode 3
Egret
Egrets are herons that have white or buff plumage, developing fine plumes (usually milky white) during the breeding season. Egrets are not a biologically distinct group from herons and have the same build.
Many egrets are members of the genera Egretta or Ardea, which also contain other species named as herons rather than egrets. The distinction between a heron and an egret is rather vague, and depends more on appearance than biology. The word “egret” comes from the French word aigrette that means both “silver heron” and “brush”, referring to the long, filamentous feathers that seem to cascade down an egret’s back during the breeding season (also called “egrets”).
Several of the egrets have been reclassified from one genus to another in recent years; the great egret, for example, has been classified as a member of either Casmerodius, Egretta, or Ardea. In the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, some of the world’s egret species were endangered by relentless plume hunting, since hat makers in Europe and the United States demanded large numbers of egret plumes, leading to breeding birds being killed in many places around the world.