Leave Only Footprints

03/11/2026

A tiny chick, two devoted parents, and a partnership that never really gets a break. ❤️

At Gibraltar Point, Little Tern parenting is very much a team effort. Both parents share the responsibility of raising their chick, taking turns guarding, brooding and keeping their youngster fed.
Watch closely and you’ll see something quite special in this clip: one parent arrives and the other steps away, seamlessly handing over responsibility. No fuss, no ceremony, just instinctive teamwork.
Life on an exposed shingle beach is demanding. Every feeding trip, every moment of protection and every changeover matters when you’re raising the next generation.
Little Terns are a conservation priority in the UK. Their breeding colonies are vulnerable to disturbance, predation, flooding and habitat loss, making the protection work at places like Gibraltar Point incredibly important.
Sometimes the greatest wildlife stories aren’t dramatic encounters, but the quiet dedication of two parents doing everything they can to give one tiny life a chance.

26/10/2026

Some days in the field, you just never know what might turn up…and then a bird like this appears in Lincolnshire 😮….

The Isabelline Wheatear really shouldn’t be here. It’s a bird of wide-open landscapes, breeding across the dry steppes and deserts of central Asia before migrating south to spend the winter in Africa and parts of the Middle East. Finding one in Lincolnshire is a genuine rarity — a reminder that even our familiar coastline can produce extraordinary encounters with birds travelling vast distances.

But these journeys come with growing challenges. Habitat loss and degradation across breeding, stopover and wintering grounds can threaten migratory birds, while climate change may alter the timing and conditions they depend on. Protecting these connected habitats is essential and one of the many reasons I love what I do working for the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust.

Our Lincolnshire coastline is full of surprises. Beyond the familiar wildlife, these shores can offer vital resting and feeding opportunities to birds travelling incredible distances. Protecting these habitats matters, not just for the species we see every day, but for the unexpected visitors that make a moment in the field truly special. 🌿

22/10/2026

Chick number 3 hatched the following day and pretty soon they were marching around like they owned the place 😊

Oystercatchers: Parenting on the edge of survival ❤️
For oystercatchers, being a parent is a full-time job in one of the most challenging environments imaginable. Both parents share the responsibility of incubating their eggs, and once the chicks hatch, the real hard work begins. The chicks leave the nest remarkably quickly, but they cannot feed themselves and rely on their parents to find and deliver food. Every meal matters, and the adults must balance feeding their young with keeping a constant watch for predators. Even more fascinating, oystercatcher chicks can take several weeks to become independent, with their parents continuing to feed them long after they have left the nest. On exposed beaches, where danger can arrive from the sky or across the sand, raising a family is an extraordinary test of teamwork, patience and survival.
Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about oystercatchers is this: a chick that can walk away from its nest within hours of hatching still depends on its parents for survival for weeks to come.
Protecting our beaches and giving these families space to raise their young can make a real difference. 💚

11/10/2026

Well, guess what I spent my morning doing ? Gorgeous first light lite this one up beautifully . We are so lucky to have them here now , we almost wiped them out — check out below …

🤍 Elegance on legs… but behind that beauty lies a dark chapter in British wildlife history.

With snow-white feathers, a dagger-sharp black bill and those unmistakable golden-yellow feet, the Little Egret looks almost too elegant to be real. Yet this beautiful bird was once driven to the brink by human vanity.

During the 19th century, its delicate breeding plumes became highly fashionable decorations for ladies’ hats. The demand was so enormous that egrets across Europe were slaughtered in vast numbers for their feathers, with breeding birds particularly vulnerable. Their persecution helped fuel the early bird protection movement in Britain and the emergence of the RSPB in 1889.

For decades, Little Egrets were an exceptionally rare sight in the UK. But following stronger protection and a natural expansion northwards from continental Europe, their fortunes changed. More than 100 arrived in Britain in 1989, and in 1996 the first pair bred here in modern times, in Dorset. Today, this once-persecuted bird has become a familiar sight around our coasts, estuaries and wetlands. What a remarkable turnaround!

🪶 Three amazing Little Egret facts

1. Those yellow feet are hunting tools! The egret shuffles them through shallow water to flush out hidden fish and other prey.
2. Lightning-fast reflexes: Its long neck and sharp bill allow it to strike at unsuspecting prey with impressive precision.
3. A seasonal transformation: During the breeding season, delicate ornamental plumes grow from its head, neck and back — the very feathers that once made it a target for the fashion industry.

The next time you see a Little Egret standing gracefully in the shallows, remember its story. A bird once persecuted for its beauty is now a symbol of what protection and changing attitudes can achieve.

Nature deserves to be admired alive, not worn as a fashion statement. 🤍.

04/10/2026

🌿 Don’t underestimate ivy — this climbing plant is one of autumn’s most important wildlife resources.

Often overlooked or even removed from gardens, ivy becomes incredibly valuable as summer fades. Its late-season flowers provide nectar and pollen when surprisingly few other plants are still flowering, making it a vital food source for bees, hoverflies, butterflies and other insects.

And it doesn’t stop there. Ivy berries develop through the winter and provide food for birds such as blackbirds, thrushes and woodpigeons, while the dense evergreen foliage offers shelter and nesting opportunities.

So that patch of ivy covering an old wall or tree might look ordinary to us and even unwanted, but to wildlife it can be a restaurant, shelter and winter food store all rolled into one. 🌿🐝🐦

03/10/2026

Chick number 2!
It’s always such an amazing time when our eggs are hatching but there’s always the risk the egg could be non viable, so it’s wonderful when they emerge 🥰

Some more interesting facts..

❤️ They can form very long-term pair bonds — some pairs remain together for many breeding seasons.
* 🗺️ They’re remarkably site-faithful — adults often return to the same breeding territories year after year.
This is something we’ve seen here at Gibraltar Point with the same pair returning year after year to our raise nesting box

02/10/2026

Who on earth could ever overlook a Dunnock ?

Take a closer look at this little beauty. (- this one’s a juvenile taken earlier this year).

The little brown bird hiding in plain sight… but there’s much more to the Dunnock than meets the eye. 🐦

Often overlooked as it quietly creeps through hedges and leaf litter, the Dunnock is one of Britain’s most familiar garden birds. But behind that understated appearance is a surprisingly complicated social life.

Dunnocks can form unusual breeding arrangements involving three adults ( the little minxes 😮! ) with two males sometimes competing for access to the same female. And rather than simply defending a territory, males may even guard a female closely to try to prevent rival males from mating with her.

They’re also remarkably adaptable, feeding on insects, spiders and other small invertebrates during the breeding season, and then switching to seeds and other food when insects become harder to find.

A quiet little bird with a surprisingly complicated life — perhaps we should look twice at the birds we usually overlook.

LeaveOnlyFootprints

27/09/2026

One of our Oystercatcher parents from this summer that successfully hatched three chicks. Here it’s still sat on two eggs but its first chick , born the day before doesn’t want to be cooped up any longer 😊

The UK’s oystercatcher population is showing a worrying decline, with breeding numbers falling by 23% between 1995 and 2024.
They remain a familiar sight around our coasts, but habitat pressures and reduced breeding success are making it increasingly difficult for these iconic waders to maintain their numbers.

06/07/2026

30/06/2026

Time to meet our little Ringed Plover chicks 😍

Tiny feet. Massive challenge. 🐣

A newly hatched Ringed Plover chick weighs little more than a few coins, yet within hours it is running across the beach in search of food. Unlike many young birds, these chicks leave the nest almost immediately, relying on their remarkable camouflage and the constant vigilance of their parents to survive.

Sadly, Ringed Plovers have declined across much of the UK over recent decades. Disturbance from people and dogs, habitat loss, and increasing predation all make raising a family a real challenge. Every chick that fledges is a small but important victory for this beautiful coastal species.

If you ever spot fenced-off nesting areas, giving these tiny birds a little extra space can make all the difference.