Latest news

Class of 2019 released into the wild

June 28, 2019

Our headstarted godwits have now been released into the wild at the project sites. This year we released three cohorts of godwits at two different sites, the RSPB Nene Washes and WWT Welney. A total […]

Godwits hatch at WWT Welney

June 7, 2019

Newly hatched godwit chicks at WWT Welney. We now have 48 chicks in the headstarting facilities at WWT Welney. The chicks started hatching towards the end of May and are doing well. The chicks spend […]

Godwit breeding season well underway

May 13, 2019

Eggs safely collected Under a licence granted from Natural England, we have collected black-tailed godwit eggs from the Nene Washes for our headstarting programme. Eggs are collected early in the breeding season to allow the […]

Headstarted birds return to the fens!

April 14, 2019

It’s been an exciting couple of weeks on Project Godwit as we welcome the first of our headstarted birds back to the project sites. We’re using headstarting to boost the population breeding at the Ouse […]

Godwits spotted in Portugal and Spain

March 12, 2019

Signs of spring are well underway at our project sites in the fens and it won’t be long before the first black-tailed godwits return to the Nene and Ouse Washes. It will be fascinating to […]

Headstarted birds make their way south

October 30, 2018

Black-tailed godwit sightings are a bit like buses… It’s always exciting when we receive news of one of “our” black-tailed godwits, even more so when we receive three sightings in one week! Three of our […]

Godwits are on the move

September 19, 2018

On this day in 2017, YO-OL(E), a breeding female black-tailed godwit from the Nene Washes, had recently arrived in West Africa, somewhere close to the Senegal and Guinea Bissau border. We know this because we […]

Class of 2018 spread their wings

August 9, 2018

It’s now been over a month since our youngest headstarted chicks were released into the wild, and our field teams have been busy monitoring their progress. This year, we released birds at two different sites […]

Notes from the field: Guest blog by Dr Jen Smart

May 22, 2018

The highs and lows of the Black-tailed godwit breeding season. We are almost half way through the wader breeding season and what a rollercoaster it has been. We started on some highs, with the return […]