Babies are a plenty down here at Burton Mere Woodlands despite the poor weather.
All this rain may have been disastrous for some parts of the country but our ground nesting birds seemed to have fared well so far .... no doubt thanks to our quick thinking reserve staff who set the sluice gates to wide open!
The stars of the show are undoubtedly the avocets who have been parading their chicks right out in front of the reception building but other successful nesters in the new wetland areas include lapwings, redshanks, little grebes, coots, moorhens, mute swan, mallard and greylag geese.
What will be next? Well we have high hopes of a couple of "firsts" as snipe have been seen and heard displaying in the evenings. This is the very first record of snipe doing this in on this part of the reserve :) For those not familiar with the noises they make with their tail feathers known as drumming check out www.rspb.org.uk/snipe
Also on this list, having not successfullynested before would be common tern which are currently nesting on the new scrape in an area now vacated by the avocets.
Not to be outdone the woodland birds look to have fared fairly well too with a family of six nuthatches visiting the feeders regularly alongside great spotted woodpeckers, great tits, blue tits and robins.
Another bird nesting in the woodlands are the little egrets and its fair to say that these birds get most people scratching their heads as the noises emanating are strange to say the least whilst the birds themselves are remarkable well hidden ... causing one visitor to ask if there was a turkey farm next door whilst another guessed that we have a lot of frogs spawning! The young egrets should be leaving their nests in the next few weeks - look for egrets standing around not doing much i.e. they don't know how to catch food!
Recent sighting: Spotted flycatcher, common tern (x4), yellow wagtail, peregrine, osprey (3rd June), ringed plover, great white egret (Parkgate)