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This week Adam visits the RSPB’s Conwy reserve to find out how it’s being used to monitor the populations of wetland bird species and to discover where they’re going and what they’re eating.

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He meets reserve manager Julian Hughes who introduces him to some of the species you can see at Conwy at this time of year, including teal, lapwing, redshank, curlew, oystercatcher and little grebe. There are also plenty of little egrets, a species which was once unknown in the British Isles but is now a regular sight. It’s an example of how populations and migration patterns can change because of land use and climate change. Julian explains how the reserve plays an important part in a national and international monitoring scheme called WeBS - the Wetland Bird Survey - which gives scientists a long-term picture of those changes.

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Adam also tallks to warden Sarah Money and two volunteers, Rosie and John, as they carry out benthic invertebrate monitoring. This is a method of assessing how much food is available to the reserve’s avian visitors and it involves taking samples of mud from the bottom of the reserve’s lagoons and then sifting out the organisms on which birds feed – particularly midge larvae. Sarah and her team can then calculate how much nutrition is packed into the mud at any particular time.Ìý