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
What's on?
We haven't got any events planned here at the moment. Check out our main events pages to find something up your street (or at least quite near to it).