Your wild spring

The

best of the season’s wildlife and where to enjoy it.

These great crested grebes are midway through an elaborate, synchronised courtship dance.

Thanks to your support, we’ve been able to help wetland species, like great crested grebes, thrive in our two counties. Learn more about how your membership is helping wetland wildlife by visiting hiwwt.org.uk/habitats/wetlands

Graceful grebes

The twentieth century was kind to great crested grebes.

Gravel extraction for house building and industry has created numerous inland lakes where the grebes now nest.

At the same time, W.H. Hudson, a pioneer in nature conservation and author of Hampshire Days (1903), campaigned for the protection of grebes from the demands of milliners for their decorative plumage.

Today, throughout Hampshire there are former gravel pits where grebes play out their elaborate courting rituals. In spring, when their plumage is at its finest, rich chestnut ruffs are puffed out in gorgeous displays of dipping and bobbing.

If sufficiently impressed with one another, the couple will rise to their full height and dance in synchrony, cheek-to-cheek, on the water. In time, a suitably enamoured pair will move into their nest, floating safely in the reedy margins of the lake shore.

Having once been a great rarity, great crested grebes can be seen wherever there are lakes, including our Blashford Lakes and Testwood Lakes nature reserves.

The Isle of Wight has fewer opportunities for seeing grebes, but these beautiful birds are moving into the Eastern Yar valley where the growing network of nature reserves is rejuvenating this natural floodplain.

See Them This Spring

 Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve

Created from flooded gravel pits, this popular birdwatching reserve in the New Forest is home to thousands of birds all year.

 Testwood Lakes Nature Reserve

As well as great crested grebes, lapwing, oystercatcher, and redshank roost on these lakes near Southampton.