Latest sightings
The long-billed dowitcher is still showing well at the back of the mere, there is lots of mud exposed which is great for the waders. Also on the mere 500 lapwing, greenshank, green sandpipers, common sandpipers, snipe, ruff, dunlin and black-tailed godwits.
The butterfly survey this week had a great variety we saw small white, large white, green-veined whites, peacock, red admirals, meadow browns, gatekeepers, large skippers, common blues and small tortoiseshells.
The third brood of treesparrows have fledged the feeders at kingfisher hide and by raines are very busy with chirping sparrows.
The first Shelduck have come back from their moult migration they can often be seen on swan lake by the cafe and at Ron Barker hide, most migratory birds breed in one country and winter in another and migrate between the 2. Shelduck breed and winter at Martin mere but they migrate to the Wadden Sea (between the Netherlands and Germany) where they congragate together in huge numbers (upto 200,000) to moult together (they become flightless as they replace all of their flight feathers at once) then they fly back to Martin Mere just in time for the swan feeds! Stock image of shelduck
