Bretton Update

The male Great Crested Grebe carefully leaves the nest to his mate as the birds enter the crucial final few days of incubation

In completing my summer BTO Atlas survey this morning I was able to look in on the grebes and swans on Upper Lake where it was business as usual. I fully expect the grebe eggs to hatch in the next few days, certainly by the weekend, and then it will be a case of trying to get shots of the chicks as they ride around on the adult's backs.

Five Mute Swan cygnets perform their ablutions under the watchful eye of their mother

The disciplinarian Mute Swans were keeping their brood in check with a series of preening exercises in front of the hide and, in an otherwise eerily quiet woodland, an adult Long-tailed Tit was able to devote some time to itself now that burdensome family chores are out of the way for another year.

A Long-tailed Tit was one of only a handful of passerines seen at Bretton today