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“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.” Dickens We enjoyed a very pleasant Wednesday Wildlife Wander on the reserve this morning. Last month's walk was pretty arctic, and looking at the...

Every autumn, Cambridgeshire Bird Club coordinates a ‘raptor watch’ at the same time at various spots around the county. For two hours everyone scans the skies for birds of prey. The records from this co-ordinated count help illustrate local breeding successes and migration. This year...

The weather certainly hasn't been remotely summery over the Jubilee weekend, but birds have been getting on with their busy lives. A pair of blackcaps has been working hard throughout, flying with caterpillars from a hedge to their nest in some bushes, then back to trhe hedge a few moments later...

With temperatures in the high 20s in the car park, where we were sheltered from the cooling breeze, it was hard to believe that temperatures in the same spot last weekend were in single figures. A red kite flew over as we were setting up the information point, at least 10 black terns spent the day...

...the birds were worth making the effort of putting on the winter clothes. We had hundreds of low-flying swifts, swallows and house martins hawking over lakes and tracks, and occasionally swifts whizzed through the car park at ankle height. Fantastic, though risky! A black tern was watched on Ferry...

Water levels are falling slowly, and paths still have standing water in places, but the bird watching has been very good recently. We watched at least five hobbies flying together, catching damselflies and eating them as the predators continued to fly. Common terns seemed to be favouring one area...

Flooding has receded and our car park is accessible again, but with more heavy rain forecasted, please keep checking the situation with us before making a long journey. An avocet flew over the car park just after people left following our guided walk this morning; we had birded along Holywell Ferry...

Swallows and house martins have provided some of the best wildlife moments this weekend here at Fen Drayton Lakes. A group of families came to us yesterday for the first in a series of visits. Yesterday’s event was dry, though the wind was cold, so we went in search of shelter, behind trees...

The RSPB Fen Drayton Lakes Wildlife Explorers group met for the first time on Saturday afternoon. A busy programme of activities was put together, with the main one being a bug hunt. Many of our members are already experts at this, as they've joined us on these events in the past, so they needed...

As it was the first day of spring on 20th March, the tern rafts were put out on Moore Lake and Ferry Lagoon ready for the return of the common terns. Waders were much in evidence that day, with a green sandpiper & two ruff passing through and oystercatchers, redshanks and lapwing all showing signs...

We had an opportunity to look at fieldfares through our telescopes during yesterday's Wednesday Wander guided walk. Lovely to see, although in much duller light than on Sunday, when Colin took his photo that is on our gallery. While we were looking at the winter visitors, I heard a chiffchaff singing...

The party of six tundra bean geese has been reported at Moore Lake again this morning, see from the Coucher Hide. Steve has just reported a red kite flying over the car park at around 1pm today - I hope he managed to get a photo add to our gallery. We saw the geese during yesterday afternoon's...

We now have six tundra bean geese dividing their time between Moore Lake and the adjacent wheat field, to the south of the lake. The sixth one was spotted yesterday - had it just arrived or had we overlooked it? The geese were in the field earlier this morning, and they'll be our primary "target...

We were lucky with yesterday's guided walk - after three stormy days there was just a gently breeze and sunshine. We found many of our ducks at the western end of Elney Lake, where most of them were sleeping on the calm water in glorious sunshine. The drakes' breeding colours were stunning, particularly...

Our monthly Wednesday Wander set off from the car park this morning with a few redwings in the hedge ahead of us. It was noticeable how few berries were left on this stretch of hawthorn - it had been laden just over a month ago, before the winter thrushes arrived. Our first challenge was to show people...

The wildlife-watching experiences here have been superb in recent days, starting with a bat-detecting evening with a local Guides pack last Thursday. They saw the common pipistrelles that the hand-held detectors detected, but the Daubenton’s bat eluded most pairs of eyes, only the detectors giving...

Over the summer months we’ve run a series of seven expeditions in search of Fen Drayton Lakes’ top predatory land bugs. No long-haul flights to steamy tropical jungles, no film crews and no big budgets for us, but we still found far too many to include all of them in our final list of a dozen...