51.45404,0.47706
- Grid ref: TQ722757
- Lat/long: 51.45404,0.47706
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Top things to do in Spring
- Look through the scrub for warblers, owls, nightingales and turtle doves
- Listen to and watch the lapwings and redshanks gather with dabbling ducks, warblers, corn and reed buntings, linnets, stonechats and skylarks
- The saline lagoons are a great place to watch breeding avocets and common terns in most years, plus great crested grebes
Top things to do in Summer
- See a superb range of returning migrant waders, including flocks of 800 black tailed godwits and 800 avocets - and rarities
- Enjoy watching the large post-breeding flocks of up to 600 shelducks and 100 little grebes, and up to 60 little egrets around the pools
- Search for a good range of insects - from the rare shrill carder and brown-banded carder bees, to lots of butterflies, grasshoppers and bush crickets
Top things to do in Autumn
- It's a good time to seawatch on the Thames with skuas and sometimes petrels seen, especially in strong north-westerly winds
- In the scrub and grassland, look for the last of the year's insects. Late dragonflies include ruddy darters and migrant hawkers
- See if you can spot some late bush crickets - especially dark bush crickets - and the last of the year's butterflies
Top things to do in Winter
- Look out for 7,000 dunlins and 2,000 lapwings, with other species including redshanks and grey plovers
- Watch hunting birds of prey in the scrub and grassland areas, including marsh harriers, merlins, peregrines and owls
- See up to 3,000 dabbling ducks (teal, wigeon, shoveler, mallard, gadwall and pintail) mainly on the northern pools