AS we’re into summer, I hope you’ll have seen baby birds by now. Ducklings and goslings are perhaps the easiest to see. A few weeks ago I regularly saw fluffy Mallard chicks with turbo-charged paddling to catch up when they realised they’d been left behind.

The picture is of ducklings of a bird that is a bit of a speciality around the Dales – the Goosander.

The first one I remember seeing, a few years ago now, I initially thought was a massive grey fish. That was in the River Aire a few miles from Malham. Then a bird bobbed to the surface, looking a bit like a duck but not quite. A long-bodied grey bird, with an orange-brown head and a shaggy mane. I had to check a book to identify it - a female Goosander. Chasing fish is how they feed. Male Goosanders are mostly white but with a black head, looking green in some light. Along the River Wharfe you have a good chance of clear views. Female Goosander in spring will often have a large “creche” of chicks, perhaps having adopted other chicks.

Goosander is a member of a group of ducks called the saw-bills due to the long, serrated bill, part of their fish-catching weaponry.

Another saw-bill duck is the Red-breasted merganser. The female Red-breasted merganser and Goosander are similar, with grey bodies and orange-brown heads. The male Red-breasted merganser looks to me like it’s built from left-over bits – that black-green head but with an orange chest, white spots and grey shading. There is a wonderful identification video you can find online from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) to help you get the right identification of these similar-looking birds.

In the summer, you might see either species around much of northern Britain. Red-breasted merganser I expect to see when I’m visiting the West coast of Scotland. They were in most bays around a part of Skye in April. I was surprised though to see them on a reservoir in Lancashire this spring. Investigating, I discover they’re colonising sites in the north of England. Goosander have been spreading even more - doubling their UK range since the late ‘60s. Cleaner rivers and climate change producing warmer springs are among the ideas explaining the spread. The chicks in the photo were a surprise find, along a beck, close to home in suburban Leeds just showing how wildlife can find and use suitable habitat.