Latest Sightings
We tallied 456 Whooper Swans and 4970 Pink-Footed Geese throughout our whole site at dawn today.
You can see the Whooper Swans up close during our daily Wild Bird Feeds in Discovery Hide. You can also see Greylag Geese, Wigeon, Shelduck, Mallards, Pintail, Coot, Tufted Ducks and Pochard.
A few hundred Pink-Footed Geese are currently resting on the fields at the back of the Mere, so bring binoculars! They will often come closer to Raine's Observatory to feed on the potato mound in the afternoon.
There have been 4 Mute Swans also on the Mere for the past couple of days - 1 of which is an immature swan (a cygnet that has left the care of it's mother) and has brown-grey juvenile plumage.
Also seen on or behind the Mere; 35 Shoveler, 7 Ruff, 40 Black-Tailed Godwit, 2 Kestrels, 3 Marsh Harrier, 1 Great White Egret, Lapwings, Cormorants and Cattle Egrets.
At Ron Barker hide, 1 Kingfisher, 1 Spotted Woodpecker and 1 Water Rail have been showing. 2 Green Sandpiper were observed on the reedbed.
16 Golden Plover at Rees hide, and 3 at Gordon Taylor hide, were spotted over the weekend. They have travelled from their breeding habitat in UK upland moors to the coastal lowland for the winter.
Photograph of a Mute Swan (foreground), and Mallard, Pintail and Shelduck (background).
