It’s been a good while since our last reserve round-up blog, purely due to such a busy summer of visitors and work beginning on our exciting café build. If you don’t already, it’s worth checking in on our Facebook or Twitter accounts – search RSPB Burton Mere for both – for daily updates on what’s happening on the reserve, including bird sightings.
Recent Sightings
It’s been one of our best years in a while for the autumn wader passage – aided by the dry summer meaning our water levels were lower than ever before, leaving lots of shallow water and exposed mud.
The wader migration begins as early as late July, with spotted redshanks prominent in their black plumage, by now completely faded to their grey and white winter hue, and a few wood sandpipers showed well for a while in August.
However September is renowned as the best month, and we had a site record of 39 curlew sandpipers across Burton Mere Wetlands a couple of weeks ago and still a small number passing through at present. Three little stints have made themselves at home for over a week, alongside good numbers of ruff and the odd green sandpiper.
Meanwhile, we’ve been treated to excellent views of dozens of snipe as they return for the winter, along with black-tailed godwits, plumes of lapwings regularly drifting around and the first few golden plovers made an appearance from Border hide last weekend.
Flying lapwings and greylag geese on wet grassland (Paul Jubb)
Early autumn is a tricky time to identify ducks as they remain in eclipse plumage as part of their moult cycle, lacking their distinctive colour and markings, however they’ll be regaining their breeding colours as we reach the end of this month. We had a family of garganey loving life on Reception Pool into September, a likely sign they had successfully nested on the reserve again. They will be well on their way to Africa now, but we have all our winter ducks back now; teal, shoveler, wigeon, gadwall, and resident mallard, tufted and gadwall can be found readily, whilst pintails aren’t ever-present, sometimes preferring the tidal estuary, but we’ve already had counts of over 100 on Bridge Pool.
Significant rainfall in late September has seen our water levels recover, bringing a nice selection of ducks, and little grebe back onto Reception Pool. The iconic pink-footed geese are now back on the estuary in force, and spending plenty of their time feeding on the wet grassland at Burton Mere Wetlands, as well as regular flights overhead from neighbouring farmland and the marshes. It’s still relatively early in the season for them though and numbers will swell further as we go through October.
Canada goose numbers have dwindled significantly, whilst greylag numbers are rising and there are still a couple of Egyptian geese being seen regularly and occasional barnacle geese. For two days last week, a single snow goose joined the pink-feet flock, but has gone missing in recent days.
Snow goose landing on wet grassland (Ron Leadbetter)
As is typical in autumn, raptor variety has increased with the occasional merlin sighting and a single ringtail hen harrier so far, but kestrel and marsh harrier are a near constant presence around the scrape and wet grassland at present, with sparrowhawk and peregrine more frequent as duck and wader numbers rise.
Great egret are probably the most prominent of the family, but a solitary cattle egret can be seen amongst the grazing ponies, plus little egret and grey heron usually skulking on the fringes of reed and rush beds.
Other highlights away from the wetlands include green woodpeckers on Burton Point field, kingfishers regularly seen around the old fishery ponds but particularly on The Mere, resident Cetti’s warblers and returning goldcrests and stonechats.
Kingfisher (Michael Cram)
On the wider reserve, the undoubted highlight of late summer was the influx of spoonbills at Parkgate, growing from the handful that spent the entire summer up to a new record of 19 in total on the estuary, and up to 6 occasionally venturing to Burton Mere Wetlands. They’ve now departed for the winter, but are definitely now a regular summer presence and we’re hoping they’ll find somewhere suitable to nest on the reserve in the near future.
Star sighting
Since it’s been so long since our last sightings blog, it’s hard to choose! We had spotted crake on the scrape from mid-August into September, a pectoral sandpiper and pied flycatcher in early September, and three little stints plus the snow goose recently.
Until yesterday, the autumn highlight would have been the near record-breaking numbers (for the Dee Estuary reserve) of curlew sandpipers in mid-September which offered many visitors their first or best-ever views of these busy, charismatic waders.
Curlew sandpipers with dunlin (front left) for comparison (Richard Speechley)
However, on Monday 3 October we had a rare visit from a yellow-browed warbler, a bird much more likely found on the east coast of the UK as they stray from the Continent on migration. It’s possible it sticks around for a short time, especially with the rough weather coming this week.
Yellow-browed warbler (rspb-images.com)
Get Involved
We’ve seen the initial work for the new café take place in the past couple of weeks, and there will be occasional disruption to normal visiting – including the occasional day we will be fully closed between now and Christmas – but we will give as much notice as possible, and the wildlife spectacle at this time of year is certainly not to be missed.
To showcase the seasonal highlights, we’ve arranged an event at each of our main sites around the estuary; a now fully-booked High Tide Wader Watch at Point of Ayr on 11 October, a Winter Wildfowl Watch at Burton Mere Wetlands on Tuesday 8 November, and our first Parkgate Raptor Watch since early 2020 on Sunday 13 November.
With the school half term fast approaching, we’ll have Big Wild Halloween packs available to buy when you arrive at Burton Mere Wetlands, which includes a quiz trail and lots of other fun for families. For full information on all our events and activities, plus booking where required, click here.
If you’re visiting soon, a reminder that we will have our full range of refreshments available to buy at the visitor centre, including sandwiches (Tuesdays to Sundays), pasties and sausage rolls daily along with a wide range of hot and cold drinks, plus snacks. This will remain unchanged until our café opens next spring.
Our mail-order shop is open daily, and as our minds soon turn to Christmas, don’t forget we sell a brilliant range of cards, wrapping, decorations plus calendars and diaries, with all profits being ploughed into our conservation work. If you order through us at Burton Mere Wetlands, we offer free delivery when you spend over £15, and you’re directly supporting the reserve.
It’s been a while since our last Binoculars and Telescopes Open Day, but we’ll have the expertise of Rob Whyatt from Viking with us on Sunday 27 November so if you’re looking to treat yourself or a loved one to some optics for Christmas, it’s an ideal time to come and try them (although the reserve team can also assist you with this on any other day).
Thanks for reading, and we’ll keep sightings blogs more regular through the coming weeks as well as keeping you updated on the café building works and any impact on visiting.