Tag Archives: RSPB Lodmoor

A Shelduck or two

28 Saturday Feb 2026

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I’ve blogged about our local Shelducks (Tadorna tadorna) before, in How many Shelducks?, 9 October 2019 and Hoovering Shelduck, 25 February 2025. They’re stunning waterfowl that look a bit like a cross between a duck and a goose, coloured by an enthusiast child with bright paints and a vivid imagination.

It’s only occasionally that I manage close views of them, as the Cardiff Bay birds spend most of their local visiting time on the distant mud flats between the Barrage and the Bristol Channel, so I appreciate all the more the times when I can sit on a bench and watch them going about their day, as happened last week at RSPB Lodmoor.

Wigeon

24 Tuesday Feb 2026

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Like Lapwing, the Wigeon (Anas penelope) is another bird I don’t see very often in my home environment. We get a few occasional Wigeon drop in at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park but they don’t usually remain very long. And, having seen them spending a lot of time grazing in very shallow water and on low grassy areas adjacent to the water at RSPB Lodmoor, I can understand why – Cosmeston simply doesn’t have undisturbed areas where the hundreds of local dogs wouldn’t be able to get to them.

So, as with the Lapwing, it was a real treat to see so many of these handsome birds at Lodmoor. The rich chestnut head and grey upper body of the male Wigeon is a particularly attractive colour combination.

I don’t recall hearing them make any noise (though that may be because their sound was drowned out by the other birds) but the name Wigeon is thought to have been derived from their whistling call. Other vernacular names – whew duck (Northumberland); whewer, whim, whistler (eastern England) – are also imitative of their call, according to Buczacki in Fauna Britannica. Here’s a link to their call on the RSPB website, if you fancy a listen.

Lapwing

23 Monday Feb 2026

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Very occasionally small numbers of Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus) are seen alighting briefly in local farm fields or are spotted passing overhead by keen-eyed birders but, generally speaking, Lapwings are a rarity in my part of south Wales. Which is a great shame because they are stunning looking birds, and their evocative call, the Peewit sound that has given them one of their many common names, is wonderful to hear.

So, you can probably imagine my delight when, on the first afternoon of my most recent Dorset trip, I made my first visit to RSPB Lodmoor and immediately saw and heard large numbers of Lapwings. Sporting the largest crest of any British bird and plumage that flashes with a metallic sheen in the sunshine, Lapwings are very handsome birds.

Somewhat surprisingly, it wasn’t the harvesting of their feathers that caused the Lapwing population to crash in previous centuries; according to Fauna Britannica, the declines were caused by people plundering Lapwing nests for their eggs, which were considered a delicacy. The book cites an example where ‘280 dozen lapwing eggs were taken annually in the 1860s’ from just one estate near Thetford.

Lapwings recovered well after this practice was made illegal in the Lapwing Act of 1926 but numbers are once again declining, this time due to changes in agricultural practices; the birds require fallow fields in which to feed during the winter but the majority of farmers now sow their fields twice each year, in spring and again in autumn. According to the British Trust for Ornithology’s publication Into the Red, the Lapwing population in Wales and southern England has declined by 80 per cent since the 1970s meaning the species is now classified as red-listed. It was a privilege to spend time watching these beautiful birds during my four visits to Lodmoor last week.

Avocet

21 Saturday Feb 2026

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I’ve just returned from my first little holiday since last September, a four-night break in Weymouth, a location that’s now a firm favourite of mine. As has become my habit, after checking in to my guest house, I headed east along the seafront to walk off five hours of train travel with a circuit of Lodmoor Nature Reserve. Though the wetlands were more full of water than usual due to all the recent rain and the paths were, as a result, quite muddy, the birdlife was a delight, and, as expected, the species were quite different from what I’d seen in the summer months. Now, there was an abundance of Teal and Shoveler, Lapwing and Wigeon, the latter two not species I see very often and both new additions to my birding year list. The other new species was a real treat and totally unexpected, this gorgeous Avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta). The Avocet is such an elegant bird, crisply clad in classic black and white, with the upwardly curved beak that makes it instantly recognisable. I was entranced and lingered until dusk watching this bird feeding and preening; it was the perfect start to my holiday!

Sandwich terns

19 Friday Sep 2025

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These beauties are the last of the birds I’ll share from my recent trip to Weymouth: Sandwich terns (Sterna sandvicensis). Though some tern species can be tricky to tell apart (Common and Arctic, in particular), with their yellow-tipped black beaks, black legs and black-capped heads, Sandwich terns are a bit more straight forward to identify.

~  Sandwich terns seen here with mostly Mediterranean gulls, Dunlin & Ringed plover

As you can perhaps see in my photos, the black cap on its head is not a permanent feature; it is fully black at the beginning of the breeding season but then quickly begins to develop white speckles above the eyes and, by the end of the summer, the whole of the forehead is white, making the ‘hair do’ resemble more of a monk’s tonsure. I guess the stress of raising young will do that, even to terns!

I didn’t know much about these birds but my guide book tells me that Sandwich terns breed in northern Europe (including in colonies around the coast of Britain), Russia and North America, then move south, which is when they can be seen in southern Britain, on passage to their wintering locations, mostly on the west coast of Africa.

If you’re wondering, as I was, about the origin of its name, in Fauna Britannica, Stefan Buczacki tells that ‘Its association with the town of Sandwich on the Kent coast dates back to 1785, when the naturalist John Latham was sent specimens collected from there by some local boys’.

Reddening Glasswort

14 Sunday Sep 2025

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You may have noticed, in a couple of yesterday’s Ruff photos – as in the photo below (which includes Lapwings, Starlings, a Cormorant drying its wings, with a Grey heron lurking in the background) – the birds are moving around amongst a reddish-coloured plant.

This is Glasswort, one of the Salicornia species, though I don’t which of several species this might be. For one thing, due to the watery environment in which Glassworts thrive, I couldn’t get close to any of the plants, but also these plants can be tricky to distinguish one from the other. If you see Glasswort and want to give it a try, the Wildflower Society website has a downloadable pdf ‘A Guide to the Identification of the Glassworts of the British Isles’.

The Glassworts are plants of seasides and saltmarshes, and are common all around the British coastline. Until this latest visit to RSPB Lodmoor, I hadn’t particularly noticed these plants but this time, as the season is changing from summer to autumn, the Glassworts begin to change colour, and, I think, look stunning. I’m sure the photographers amongst you will also appreciate what a wonderful backdrop this colour provides for images of the local birds.

Ruffing it

13 Saturday Sep 2025

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I’ve just returned from another few days on England’s south coast, in Weymouth and on the Isle of Portland, this time, due to its being migration season and the often inclement weather, mostly birding. And, despite the blasting westerly winds and the frequent heavy rain, it was wonderful!

After arriving mid afternoon on Monday, I took myself on a walk – to stretch my old body after five hours’ train travel and to get some fresh air in my lungs – to RSPB Lodmoor. It’s such a convenient distance from Weymouth town centre and always has something to delight my birding senses. And Monday’s visit did not disappoint, providing my first sighting this year of Ruff (Philomachus pugnax).

The story of the Ruff in Britain is a sad one. My guide book recounts that Ruff became extinct as a breeding bird in Britain around 1850, though it managed to re-establish itself in East Anglia for a time in the 1960s. Now, few if any young are raised in Britain, with the bird’s main breeding grounds ranging from Scandinavia as far east as Siberia, and south as far as the Netherlands. Though some Ruff are present throughout the year in Britain, and several hundred over-winter here, most are seen during autumn migration when the birds pass through on their way to Africa, some flying as far as South Africa.

The Ruff is red-listed in Britain and is globally threatened, as its population has declined dramatically and its breeding and non-breeding ranges have also declined. The two birds I saw are female (though the species name is Ruff, the male bird is known as Ruff due to its extraordinary breeding plumage, while the female is known as Reeve). I felt very privileged to enjoy reasonably close sightings of these large waders and spent quite a lot of time watching them feeding up for their long journey south.

Lodmoor’s distant birds

07 Thursday Aug 2025

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I wrote in Tuesday’s blog (Egrets, little and large) that I would share in a subsequent post more of the birds I saw during last week’s three visits to RSPB Lodmoor, and here they are. Most were quite distant but I thought it was worth documenting the wide variety of birds that can be seen at this wonderful reserve.

You may struggle to spot the two birds in this photo – they are sitting facing each other on the ‘beach’ area but their colours blend in rather well to the background. In spite of that, this was probably the standout sighting for me, as these are Bearded tits, and, given their sandy colouring, these were probably fledglings, the first ones I’ve seen.

Black-tailed godwit numbers increased from three on my first visit to Lodmoor to eight on my final visit, and numbers will likely continue to increase as these birds return from their breeding grounds in Iceland and continental Europe. You may just be able to spot some smaller birds amongst the shorter reeds in the foreground. These are Dunlin.

I blogged about seeing Breeding Common terns after my June visit to Lodmoor. This time the Common terns had almost all fledged, though one chick remained on one of the breeding platforms and several sat on the sand waiting for their parents to return and feed them. Above you can see two Common terns at the left of the frame but the two terns in the centre of the image are Little terns. These breed, in a specially protected area, on nearby Chesil Beach and, though I saw some there very distantly during my last visit, it was wonderful to see these two at a much closer distance. The birds in the background are a mix of Mediterranean and Black-headed gulls.

How gorgeous is this Lapwing? I think it’s a juvenile bird as it seemed curious rather than scared by my proximity on the path just across from where it was foraging for food, and I had read that Lapwings have bred on the reserve this year.

I was scanning the reeds for anything interesting when this stunning Marsh harrier flew up almost right in front of me. Bushes obscured it from view for a few minutes so I couldn’t get any better photos and, though it did a circuit around the far side of the reserve, it soon disappeared from sight once again.

Last but by no means least are two sandpipers. On the left is a Wood sandpiper, a bird I’d only ever seen once before and, though my picture only shows one, two birds frequented this pool all of last week. This species is only seen in Britain during Spring and Autumn as they move between their breeding grounds in northern Europe and their over-wintering locations in Africa, so I was particularly lucky to have synchronised my visit with their stopover. The bird on the right is a Green sandpiper, another bird I don’t see very often. Though they are known to frequent a river quite near where I live, it’s not a location I can easily access, plus they are very flighty birds, heading for the skies at the slightest suggestion of humans close by.

Egrets, little and large

05 Tuesday Aug 2025

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This is a view of RSPB Lodmoor from the footpath that runs along the western edge of the reserve. With areas of open water and hidden pools, lush reedbeds and swathes of saltmarsh, it’s a wetland paradise for birds and, as well as having a resident population of water fowl, the fact that the reserve is right on the coast means that it’s also a mecca for migrating birds, and sightings of rarities are relatively frequent.

I’ll share more of Lodmoor’s birds in another post but today want to focus on the egrets. They are members of the Heron family and share Lodmoor with their Grey heron (Ardea cinerea) cousins, though not always harmoniously – I saw a couple of spats between the herons and egrets during my visits. There is a resident population of Little egrets (Egretta garzetta), which only arrived in numbers in the UK in 1989 and first bred somewhere in Dorset in 1996, per the RSPB website, but are now quite common in southern Britain. The photo below shows a Grey heron, a Great white egret and two Little egrets.

I saw my first Great white egret (Ardea alba) of the year during my visit to Lodmoor in June but it was moving around the edge of a distant, inaccessible pool, so I didn’t get a good look at it. This time, there were several Great whites around the reserve and, as you might guess from the photo below, I had my closest ever views of this handsome bird as it stalked around a pool, hoping to spear a fish or two.

While it was wonderful to enjoy such good sightings of the Great white egrets, the egret highlight of this trip came during my second visit to Lodmoor, and only happened because I got chatting to some other birders. One of them was convinced she had seen a Cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) but it had subsequently disappeared behind the tall reeds. Luckily for me, within minutes the bird popped up again. Below, you can see two Great white egrets and the much smaller Cattle egret, with two Grey herons off to the right.

Like the Little egret, the Cattle egret is a recent migrant to Britain that has made itself at home. It was first recorded breeding here in 2008, and its population is expanding ever northwards from its initial strongholds in southern Britain. This particular Cattle egret remained distant and soon vanished again into the reed beds but it was a delight to have seen so many members of the heron family together.

Sunshine in a butterfly

04 Monday Aug 2025

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I’ve been away for another mini break, staying once again in Weymouth, on Dorset’s south coast, for four nights, spending my three and a half days surrounded by birds and butterflies (also crowds of summertime beach visitors, though, fortunately for me, most of them weren’t in Weymouth for the same kind of wildlife as I was). With cool winds and lengthy spells of drizzle, the weather wasn’t as good as during my visit in early June, but I saw lots of lovely creatures that I will share with you over the coming week.

First up today is the first of four new-for-2025 butterfly species I saw, this gorgeous Clouded yellow (Colias croceus), a butterfly I don’t see in south Wales every year as they’re migrants from Europe and their appearance on our shores depends a lot on weather and wind direction and how their population is faring. This sighting was particularly welcome, as I had spent Tuesday morning wandering around the RSPB’s Radipole reserve in almost constant drizzle, then headed for an afternoon wander around RSPB Lodmoor. This little drop of sunshine fluttered up right in front of me when I got to Lodmoor, a sign of the lovely afternoon to follow.