Like Springwatch?
Want to know how to turn your garden into your own little nature reserve?
Then get down to Burton Mere Wetlands this weekend for free, friendly advice on how you can help the creatures in your garden thrive.
We will have lots of wildlife friendly plants for you to pick up and take home (in exchange for a small donation).
Children can test out their green fingers too with a hands on activity or take part in a quiz trail.
Perhaps not the exact origin of the saying but coot chicks are very bald indeed!
This is one of five on the pool just outside the reception building at Burton Mere Wetlands.
We also have a newly hatched brood of greylag geese and five different broods of avocets, so babies are the feature of the week.
Other recent sightings: Marsh harrier (female), garganey (male), yellow wagtail, sanderling, grey plover, tawny owl
"Congratulations on the birth of your baby avocets" do greetings card companies make such a card?
Sometime on Sunday, Burton Mere Wetlands' first ever avocet chicks hatched and instantly begun to steal the show. Three tiny grey, fluffy, long-legged, up-turned-billed chicks are unbelievably cute and could soon be joined by more as nine more parents sit tightly on eggs......
However, the parent birds are going to have to keep their wits about them as already an immature peregrine and adult great black-backed gull have been on patrol ... !
Other recent sightings: Garganey (drake), ringed teal (escapee, very similar plumage to garganey so be careful!), 80+ black-tailed godwits, little ringed plover, cuckoo (male), reed warblers, hobby (x2)
I'm not sure why but every bird beginning with "Wh" is turning up here at the moment.
Earlier on it was the whimbrels en route from west and southern Africa to their northern breeding grounds and this past week has seen a large fall of wheatear, whinchat and white wagtails on the Wirral. Sunday saw four whinchat flycatching along the fenceline in front of the reception building - amazing views probably the best for years on this reserve. These close relatives of the more familiar stonechat winter in Central and Southern Africa often crossing the Mediterrannean AND Sahara in one go!
Also beginning with "wh" are the whitethroats as both common and lesser are present sining on the reserve. The lesser whitethroats are perhaps more noticable at Inner Marsh Farm and due to their skulking behaviour are often only revelaed by thier distinctive dry rattling song which sound like the beginning of a yellowhammer song.
Other recent sightings (not beginning with Wh): Garganey x2, Dunlin x5, ringed plover x2, little ringed plover x2, yellow wagtail x6, avocet x20, black-tailed godwit x68, Temminck's Stint (Parkgate),