.......and to think that only 25/30 years ago David's post would have brought hundreds of twitchers into Lincoln. There was a grand total of only ONE Little Egret in the BTO Winter Atlas for the 3 winters between 1981/82 and 1983/84......in Orkney, of all places. The first UK breeding record was on Brownsea Island, Poole Harbour, Dorset in 1986.
I remember travelling many miles from Folkestone into the wilds of Essex in 1986 to twitch my first Little Egret. Re a comment in the 1988 Rarities report regarding an observation of 5 birds together : " The observer must have checked the alignment of his binoculars before believing his eyes." (British Birds 82:512).
However, in 2009 over 800 pairs of Little Egret bred in Britain and Ireland and the WeBS count for that Autumn totalled over 5000 individuals on our estuaries and waterways (BTO).
What a success story the Little Egret is.
Freddy