Blogs

It’s that time of year again, the waders are returning to Auchnerran, our Scottish demonstration farm.

A redshank ringed by the GWCT Wetlands research team in the Avon Valley in 2021 has been re-sighted in Northwest France, near Lannion.

Immortalised by Kenneth Grahame as poetic dreamer Ratty in The Wind in the Willows, the water vole is today a rare sight in Britain’s countryside. Habitat loss and predation have diminished the population of Britain’s largest vole by over 90%, and they are currently believed to be extinct in 97% of their former range. So, witnessing an attempt to re-establish a population in the lower Avon Valley on the Hampshire-Dorset border recently was a rare privilege indeed.

Watch this short video produced by The Fieldsports Channel on our Waders for Real project, which aims to reverse the decline of breeding waders in the Avon Valley, with the help of farmers, keepers and land managers.

Spring 2020 has been a very different year for members of the GWCT Wetlands team, as it has been for all of us. 

The end of September saw the Waders for Real team head to Morecambe Bay in Lancashire to attend the International Wader Study Group Conference; a four-day event involving wader scientists from all around the world

With temperatures warming and the days getting longer, breeding Lapwing will shortly be back in the Avon Valley. We have been a busy team this winter, establishing 2 new breeding wader hotspot sites and monitoring wintering waterfowl and waders. So, before we get into the 2019 season, we thought it would make sense to reflect on 2018.