{"id":708448,"date":"2026-07-24T07:33:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T07:33:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708448\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T07:33:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T07:33:08","slug":"rare-night-heron-spotted-at-holnicote-estate-in-somerset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/708448\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare night heron spotted at Holnicote estate in Somerset"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A bird rarely seen in the UK has been caught on camera in Somerset, raising hopes that work to restore freshwater habitats could provide a refuge for it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The black-crowned night heron is widespread across Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe but has now been spotted at National Trust&#8217;s Holnicote Estate, near Minehead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This comes as conservationists at the estate introduced new freshwater habitats, providing a refuge for the heron, but also water voles, otters, pine martens, and even white-tailed eagles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ben Eardley, project manager for Somerset Coast and Countryside, said: &#8220;It&#8217;s rare to see this wetland species in the UK and so exciting that we have observed one on our estate cameras.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A bird rarely seen in the UK has been caught on camera in Somerset, raising hopes that work&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-708448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}