News
What is WeBS?
Ever heard someone referring to webs and then when they started talking about birds instead of spiders were a bit thrown? Well that's because they were talking about WeBS, the British Trust for Ornithology's monthly Wetland Bird Survey. It is a UK-wide su
13 March 2024
Is it a skylark?
I’m out on the merse one morning conducting a survey. The sun is shining. The wind is calm. All very picturesque. Suddenly a bird starts singing, effortlessly rising higher and higher in the air, its song seems to last forever. I’m mesmerised. But the
11 March 2024
Wetland Word of the Week 2
Our second wetland word of the week is...... flobby, a Scots word used of clouds meaning they are large and indicating rain. We get a lot of that down here at Caerlaverock, being in South West Scotland but it definitely keeps our wetland wet! Scots is
11 March 2024
Green winged teal and more sightings highlights
We have had a special visitor causing a bit of a flutter this week: a drake (male) green winged teal. It was first spotted on the Folly Pond this Wednesday (6th March) and was moving around the site the rest of the week. Very similar to our Eurasian teal
9 March 2024
Wetland Word of the Week 1
For our Words for Wetlands programme we are creating a dictionary of wetland words. Our first is merse......meaning the marshy land where the river meets the sea, specifically applied to the Solway Firth. Merse is the word we use when talking about the sa
7 March 2024
We all know what March means...
It’s getting to that time of year: we are nearing the end of daily swan feeds.The swans are getting ready to head back to Iceland for their summer holidays. We are seeing fewer and fewer of them on the Whooper Pond during the feeds and will soon be able
4 March 2024
Rich Hearn. A tribute.
Last week we lost Rich Hearn. We lost a valued colleague. We lost his outstanding skills in monitoring, research and action planning for water birds. And we lost a voice for policy change to save wetlands across the world. We will miss his friendship, his humour, his adventures, his antics, his passion for birding and his unfailing energy to share his time, knowledge and skills with anyone who needed it.
27 February 2024
From yelling 'stick together' to 'it's all about me!'
It’s a day where the distance is hidden, the close is blurry and grey and so as I head down the Saltcot Loaning, I lean more to using ears than eyes. We love to label and compartmentalise times of year but today fits no man-made season: my ears tell me
27 February 2024
Introducing our new feeding station
After several months of planning and postponing and dreaming and rearranging, we have finally completed our first project – redesigning the bird feeder station. The station is along the Peter Scott Trail in an area of wet woodland. This habitat provides
20 February 2024
Willow Weaving
Before Christmas, a fence along the Saltcot Loaning blew over, an unfortunate event... Or was it?It gave us the exciting challenge of creating our very first willow screen. Willow is amazingly flexible due to its fast-growing nature causing a lack in cell
18 February 2024
Observations from the Big Hideout
Excitedly I grab some old binoculars after hearing that we have a certain visitor to our Whooper pond.Although they delight our team and visitors from time to time, I am yet to see one.It is with glee that upon hurriedly reaching the observatory, I am gre
16 February 2024
Put a ring on it
It is uncommon for us to be finding new swan rings at this time of year. Normally by this time, we stop seeing birds with rings that haven’t visited the reserve yet this season. But at the end of January, ZJA was spotted. The ring was old and weathered-
14 February 2024
Labour scrapping green investment pledge is a mistake, but it’s not too late, we say
Yesterday marked an entire year that the world’s average warming exceeded 1.5C – deemed by most scientists as the safe limit to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown on people, nature and the economy.
9 February 2024
The crunch of snail shells
I walk down the Saltcot Loaning and hear a crunch as I step. Glancing down, I notice a snail shell under the toe of my boot. I jerk back immediately, worried I’ve just crushed some little creature. I crouch down to look at it and it is just an empty she
6 February 2024
The Big Green Hike 2024
Since 2022 WWT has joined forces with environmental charities for The Big Green Hike – a nationwide sponsored walking challenge to raise vital funds for nature.
6 February 2024