Print pageSeasonal highlights
Each season brings a different experience at our nature reserves. In spring, the air is filled with birdsong as they compete to establish territories and attract a mate. In summer, look out for young birds making their first venture into the outside world. Autumn brings large movements of migrating birds - some heading south to a warmer climate, others seeking refuge in the UK from the cold Arctic winter. In winter, look out for large flocks of birds gathering to feed, or flying at dusk to form large roosts to keep warm.
Spring
At the brackish Black Barn pools and grasslands, breeding lapwings and redshanks gather with dabbling ducks, marshland warblers, corn and reed buntings, linnets, stonechats and skylarks. The saline lagoons have breeding avocets and common terns in most years, plus great crested grebes.
View the pools and lagoons to see migrant waders like greenshanks and spotted redshanks. The scrub holds warblers, owls, nightingales and turtle doves. There is an excellent display of blooming hawthorn from Pinnacle viewpoint.
Summer
At the brackish pools and saline lagoons, a superb range of returning migrant waders - 25-30 species seen in the last four years, including flocks of up to 800 black tailed godwits and 800 avocets, with green, wood, common and curlew sandpipers, little stints, spotted redshanks, greenshanks plus rarities. This builds up slowly through July and peaks in August, when it is probably as good as any site in the country in this respect.
Large post-breeding flocks of up to 600 shelducks and 100 little grebes, and up to 60 feeding little egrets can be found around the pools.
In the scrub and grasslands, a good range of insects (rare bumblebees especially, eg. shrill carder bee, brown-banded carder bee) including lots of butterflies through the summer including marbled white, common blue, comma, Essex skipper and the migrant clouded yellow, and a large range of grasshopper and bush crickets, including Roesel's bush cricket. There is a good display of common flower species like wild carrot, birds foot trefoil and melilot.
Autumn
Numbers of migrant waders tend to diminish on the pools and lagoons at the end of September and are replaced by wintering waders such as dunlins and grey plovers. Summer songbirds head south whilst winter thrushes - redwings and fieldfares - move in from the north.
It's a good time to seawatch on the Thames with skuas and sometimes petrels seen, especially in strong north-westerlies.
In the scrub and grasslands, the last of the year's insects can be seen: late dragonflies include ruddy darters and migrant hawkers; there are late bush crickets, especially dark bush crickets; the last of the year's butterflies includes wall browns and small tortoiseshells.
Winter
Winter wader and duck numbers build up on the pools and lagoons, with impressive high-tide roosts of up to 7,000 dunlins, 2,000 lapwings, with other species including redshanks and grey plovers. Wet winters can see up to 3,000 dabbling ducks (teals, wigeons, shovelers, mallards, gadwalls and pintails) mainly on the northern pools.
Coots and diving ducks, eg. pochards and tufted ducks, build up into the low hundreds with smaller numbers of goldeneyes. There is also the occasional scaup or red-necked, black-necked or slavonian grebe.
Hunting raptors in the scrub and grassland areas include hen and marsh harriers, merlins and peregrines. There are winter thrush and finch flocks around the hawthorns.