Toilets are unquestionably valuable for sanitation. And the doodoo that comes out of them can be pretty useful too. Using specially created wetlands, the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) hygienically treats waste in a simple natural way. And those special wetlands are also much needed habitats for some of our rare British wildlife. The concept is being taken around the globe where the benefits include clean water, food and protection from flooding.

19 November is World Toilet Day. To celebrate WWT is telling the world how the waste from toilets is supporting a wealth of wildlife. At WWT headquarters in Slimbridge, the millennium treatment wetlands treat the waste from the toilets. The waste is treated over a series of reedbeds and ponds which separate the liquids and solid and recycle the nutrients. It’s wildlife rich as a result. It supports 50 plant species. Water rail and Cetti’s warblers use the reedbeds – water rail is especially fond of the small reedbed which takes all the sludge as it is composted down. The ponds are home to a host of macroinvertebrates – dragonflies, damselflies and caddis flies. The millennium wetlands are just one of 13 wetland treatment systems in use at WWT wetland centres. Each year between them they clean the waste of one million visitors and many thousands of birds.

WWT has taken the principle to other sites around the UK via its consulting arm. And construction work is just about to start on a series of new wetlands in the capital of Laos, Vientiane. One new wetland will be built for a school – others will be built for homes, villages and even a beer factory.

The school has a toilet block, but it is in a bad state and waste seeps from the unsanitary septic system. The new treatment wetlands, to be built at the school in January, are designed by a local team trained by WWT and headed by WWF Laos and local government environment staff. They are shaped like a wetland insect from above – a fun way to engage the children. Once the area has grown up it will be home to all sorts of wildlife and the teachers can use it to teach science to the pupils.

Sally Mackenzie, WWT’s project leader said, “Not everyone will want to think about it too much, but nature is brilliant that it can recycle our waste into wildlife. At our centres in the UK we’ve provided extra habitats for the birds and the insects whilst dealing with the problem of our waste in a natural and cheap way at the same time. The pupils here at None Kor School are going to be fascinated that their poo is feeding this amazing and beautiful wildlife area.”

If you would like to do your bit at home, use environmentally sensitive cleaning products, which help treatment wetlands and traditional sewage works to process waste properly and don’t add damaging chemicals to our waterways.

The news we have all been waiting for! Crinkly, our swan with the crinkly neck, flew on to Swan Lake this afternoon, after surviving yet another gruelling migration!

Crinkly has become a firm Slimbridge favourite after first arriving here in 2004 as a cygnet with parents Lucius and Coletta. She has a kink in her neck which makes her very distinctive from the other swans, and against all of the odds, has survived nine journeys, clocking up over 27,000 km! It is thought that Crinkly was born with this birth defect, and although is not as aerodynamic as the others, seems to cope very well! She does not appear to have a mate, although a partner that is new to the reserve may be initially hesitant in coming on to the main lake so we will have to wait and see….

The full moon and clear skies last night would have provided good visibility for navigation so it was not all that surprising to see another three new swans arrive along with Crinkly. Amongst those was Crinkly’s father, a swan named Lucius! Although Bewick’s swans usually become independent from their parents after a year, Crinkly is still loosely associating with his father four years later! There was no sign of the family today although the parents are known to frequent other sites around Gloucestershire throughout the winter. They always return to the reserve so we look forward to seeing them again soon!

The first family of Bewick’s swans landed at the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust’s Slimbridge Wetland Centre today having travelled thousands of miles from their summer breeding haunts in the Arctic Circle.

Parents Conrad and Connie flew into the reserve at around 8.50am this morning with two new strapping youngsters and a yearling. These new arrivals bring the total number of swans to arrive this season so far to 13.

Conrad and Connie first came to Slimbridge in 2002 and have only missed one season in 2003. The pair has also arrived with cygnets before; one in 2004 and another in 2006.

WWT’s head of UK waterbird conservation Eileen Rees said: “We always welcome back swans that return to Slimbridge each year because they become old friends, but it is particularly encouraging when we see the arrival of new cygnets. Initial research from the Russian artic this summer indicated that it had been a poor breeding season and typically early arrivals in the wintering range tend not to have youngsters. So this is very promising and hopefully means that conditions during the second part of the breeding season were better than in the first, enabling swans that succeeded in hatching cygnets to raise their young.”

November to February is the best time to see the swans at the nature reserve with the highest numbers of around 300 around mid January. Visitors can join free daily commentated swan feeds at 4pm from the comfort of the centre’s Peng Observatory, or come after normal opening hours for a special floodlit swan feed at 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays (£5 adults, £3 children).

During these feeds, experts introduce visitors to the swans, many of whom have been wintering at the site since they were cygnets. All of the adult and yearling swans wintering at Slimbridge can be individually identified by the unique pattern of yellow and black on their bill.

A pair of whooper swans have flown into WWT Martin Mere with a record number of nine cygnets.

Three of the cygnets are slightly lighter in colour, which suggest that this is in fact two broods of six and three. The likelihood is that the smaller brood has been adopted as they could have lost their parents during the migration, which is not unusual in poor weather, and subsequently latched onto the family.

Centre manager Andy Wooldridge, said: “It is not completely unusual for swans to adopt cygnets that have been orphaned through the migration journey. The research undertaken at Martin Mere is starting to show this trend more and more, making this an invaluable source of information on the migration habits of these birds.”

Whooper swans spend the breeding season in Iceland before flying over to winter in the UK, with Martin Mere welcoming approximately seven percent of the Icelandic population from November to March. A pair of whooper swans would usually expect to have three to four cygnets per year, and the cygnets could be as young as one month old when they make the migration journey.

Whooper swans tend to pair for life, and research is being undertaken at Martin Mere over the winter to ring the swans with their own identification numbers. It will then be possible to start building pictures of their family trees and migration habits every year. One of the parents of this brood, H3V, first visited Martin Mere in 2006, but his mate is currently unringed.

The last of the three barnacle geese – Thor – arrived back on 31 October with a mate. This is fantastic news after what has been a lengthy journey. Thor has travelled from his unusual summer destination just off the coast of Edgeøya, which is east of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago. This was the first time WWT has tracked a barnacle goose to this breeding area – most colonies are currently situated on the warmer west coast of Spitsbergen.

This kind of information is vital in terms of the ongoing conservation of these geese, and is exactly what the Top Goose project was set up to do. Launched in February by WWT in collaboration with the BBC Radio 4 series World On the Move and Bristol University, Top Goose is a research first. It was set up to track the three barnacle geese, as well as three Greenland white-fronted geese and three brent geese, and compare how much fuel each needed to complete their migration. It also looked to answer questions like how they cope with extreme weather, and how they decide how much food they need to make such incredible journeys.

DrLarry Griffin, senior research officer at the WWT Caerlaverock, comments: “It was great to see all three of our barnacle geese arrive back safely after migration, particularly as we had lost satellite transmission from Thor. It has been quite a journey for them, especially Thor. In monitoring their activity over the last few months, we have learnt a lot about their migratory patterns. This is vital if we are to conserve this fantastic species.”

This afternoon’s Bewick’s swan count has risen to eight. Six Bewick’s flew into WWT Slimbridge just before 8am this morning to keep Anga, the lone Bewick’s who arrived on Saturday, company, and by this afternoon, there were eight.

Heavy rain in the area on Saturday night and much of Sunday would have created poor visibility for the swans which would have made navigating difficult during the weekend, but conditions cleared last night enough to bring in these latest arrivals.

Wildlife research officer Julia Newth said: “We’ve identified another Slimbridge regular, Dario, but worryingly without its mate Dorcus. The other six swans are new to the reserve, one a yearling who may have wintered here last year, but the other five are new. One has been identified as an individual ringed by WWT scientists during our annual expedition to the Russian tundra this summer, so it’s really exciting to see that swan come to Slimbridge.”

Visitors to Slimbridge have the chance to see Anga, Dario and the new arrivals at Slimbridge at the daily commentated wild bird feeds every afternoon at 4pm.

Click on the Bewick’s Swan Diary to read all the latest news on each individual Bewick’s swan as they arrive and enjoy the winter at Slimbridge.

The wait is over. The first Bewick’s swan arrived at WWT Slimbridge this morning, finally putting an end to speculation this week over whether they would arrive at all.

The swan flew in at 0630 and was quickly identified by its unique bill pattern at Anga, a swan who visited Slimbridge first as a yearling in 2005 and has wintered on the reserve every year since. Anga has been one of the first Bewick’s swans to arrive at Slimbridge for the past four years and has been happily feeding on swan lake since its’ arrival this morning.

Visitors to Slimbridge from today will have the chance to see Anga during the daily commentated swan feeds in the Peng Observatory.

Julia Newth, wildlife research officer at WWT, said: “We were never in any doubt that the Bewick’s would arrive at Slimbridge this year. A mild autumn and weeks of westerly winds haven’t provided the best conditions for migration which will have contributed to the delay. So we weren’t surprised that the plummeting temperatures and easterly winds we’ve had over the past few days have encouraged the swans to complete their 3,000km migration from arctic Russia to the UK and into Slimbridge today.”