Burton Birds

 Hi everyone, sorry this post is a bit late, but it is worth it due to what we've seen. I should have a few new camera trap posts, and even a post from a trip to sandbach flashes last week, but I thought that the trip to RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands would be the most exciting. I had three targets to see there - Avocets (which if you remember from the start of the year I said it is the bird I want to see the most in 2025),  marsh harriers (birds of prey that inhabit wetlands and will hunt small mammals, birds and reptiles/amphibians) and ruffs (hopefully a male one as they look really cool). 

The first bird I saw was a great egret on a pond as soon as we arrived:

There were also several avocets that you could see from the visitor center, but they were very far away and would have been hard to photograph through the glass window. There wasn't too much at the first proper hide - greylags, lapwings and quite a few little egrets:

We walked around to the final hide, at the other end of the reserve, and this one was by far the most active. There were lapwings, shelduck, little egrets and even some avocets. Unfortunatley, they were far away on the waters edge on the other side of the pool (apart from one which was resting in the middle of the water):

Suddenly, all the birds took off at the same time and a few seconds later a marsh harrier flew over. Not just one, but two - both of them juveniles. 

One of them landed in a tree, really far away but I still managed to get a few photos:

Despite scaring a lot of the birds away, the marsh harriers actually helped out as they scared the avocets much closer, right in front of the hide. I managed to loads of photos of them feeding, using their uniquely shaped beaks:

Here is a juveile avocet:

Here is a flock of lapwings:

After a while at that hide, we started to head back. I stopped off at the first hide again. There wasn't too much aside from another very distant avocet, a pair of herons and an oystercather. Here is the oystercatcher:

Back at the visitor center I saw some more avocets, loads of black-tailed godwits, another brief fly over from one of the marsh harriers and even a ruff. Unfortunatley it wasn't one of the males so it didn't have a big ring of feathers around it's neck. Anyway, here is the female ruff surrounded by godwits and several avocets in the background: 

After seeing the ruff, we'd ticked off all three targets and were ready to head home. The avocets and the marsh harrier were some of my favourite spots ever on the blog, and hopefully I'll head back to RSPB Burton Mere Wetlands soon. That's all for today's post, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Remember to leave a comment and thanks for reading!