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With the wonderful weather we've had over the past few days, things have been busy down here at the reserve. Although the weather may have cooled down the bird action certainly hasn't with this morning bringing with it some brilliant views of a female marsh harrier and a male hen harrier , both...

Needless to say, Rhian's excited proclamation - upon the arrival of our first avocet of the year in mid-February - that spring was here, was a little premature. Since then we've had plenty more snow flurries, frozen pools and lots of gratitude for the stove in our reception hide. However, we've...

Dear All It has been a while! I have just returned from our warden welly walk around the back of IMF2. It was great :-) A lovely bunch of people keen to learn and lovely sunshine. The last couple of weeks have been wet ones indeed for me. Due to high winds and high tides I have been helping our...

With all this rain maybe we should be building an ark .... come to think of it the reception building here is a safe bet if we get any floods! Returning waders are stealing the show at the moment and despite what you may have heard on the news this week some waders do return this early. Despite...

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...

"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...

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...

A few not-so-subtle changes have occured in the past week or two as the first summer visitors have arrived whilst most of the winter stayers have left. Several unmistakable sounds were noticed as I opened up the reserve this morning, firstly at least 3 chiffchaffs were singing - and yes that distinctive...

Dear All It has been a long time since I had the time to sit down and update what we have been up to on the practical side of things! Sorry! You may have seen me this afternoon mowing half of the sacrificial crop – destructive as it may look there is a good reason for it! We mow it now before...

With the weather taking a turn for the worse birding has become slightly moe difficult as birds take refuge (getting decent pictures has been even tougher!). So as soon as the clouds broke I popped down to the hide where this stunning looking male ruff was waiting to have its picture taken. This...

Hello This time of year is very busy as early morning breediig bird surveys begin as early as 7am! Redshank surveys have started out on the marsh with skylarks, reed bunting, oystercatcher and meadow pipits all recorded displaying over our plots. A volunteer and I had amazing views...

The Big Year for IMF is going strong as mid-late March saw us smash through the 100 species mark for the year. Thank You. The usual suspects - avocet (11th), sand martin (13th), wheatear (13th), chiffchaff (25th), house martin (25th), swallow (25th) - were joined by an early fall of blackcaps (14th...