Rate birdingplace Grantchester Meadows
Description
Grantchester Meadows is an area of wildflower meadows, dykes, streams, fens and reedbeds. Look for Common Kingfisher, Grey Heron, Little Grebe, Osprey, Reed Bunting, Sedge Warbler, Reed Warbler, plus Eurasian Wigeon, Common Shelduck, Northern Lapwing, European Golden Plover, Eurasian Curlew, Little Egret and Northern Shoveler, when the area is flooded. Various bat species, newts, fox, badger, weasel, otter and stoat occasional.
Details
Access
Access from Cambridge on foot via Grantchester Meadows Lane, see map. Nearest rail station, Cambridge. Click on a P in the map for directions.
) to insert bird names in your own language. The birdnames will automatically be translated for other users!
A lot of the species on this page are by no means regular at the meadows, Calandra Lark for example has only been recorded in the UK on a handful of occasions...
Outside the ridiculous species on this page; Osprey is a scarce passage migrant and not recorded here annually, ducks are usually only present on the flood and things like Goosander and Shelduck are seldom if ever recorded. Waders are also rare excepting Snipe and Lapwing, this is not a place you'd expect to see Curlew for example. Merlin are very scarce in winter.
Species that aren't featured that actually do regularly feature here are Yellowhammer, Grey Partridge, often in spring Mandarin Duck on the flood. Corn Buntings roost.
I am sorry for your disappointment Joe. Calandra lark is clearly an error and now edited out. Thanks for flagging that up. No one would expect to see every bird listed on a visit. Ebird (included above) does list Osprey, Merlin, 8 duck species and 9 waders species here. Eurasian Curlew can appear on passage at any wetlands site. No editor can be expected to list every species that occurs.
Hi Iain, thanks for your comment and I hope I didn't offend- I see you've added a lot of places on here and it will be of great use to a lot of people visiting these. To clarify, my slight frustration comes from the 'Top 5 species to see'; in my view these should be the 5 standout species one really does have a good chance of encountering at the site. For Grantchester Meadows (as a regular visitor myself) it is simply not reflective of the species one can reasonably expect to encounter. Grantchester is a lovely local patch but the real highlights do not include often Osprey or Grasshopper Warbler which are real scarcities- as far as I am aware one record of each in the last 5 years. If a visiting birder opened this page and saw the 5 standout species, they might travel to see these species here, and likely be disappointed. Of course during migration anything can turn up anywhere, but if we're being realistic about birding prospects here: Grantchester is brilliant for Barn Owl- almost guranteed. Kestrel and Peregrine are regular, as are Corn Bunting and Yellowhammer. Little Owl also occur.
On the topic of rarities, If you want to add another rarity to the 'has featured list', my friend Arjun and I found a white-spotted Bluethroat at this site in the spring of 2024.
Cheers,
Joe