Each winter, from September until March, local birdwatchers count all of the waterfowl (herons, coots, moorhens, ducks, geese and swans) on the Paxton Pits complex. Around Britain, thousands of birders are doing the same, at hundreds of wetlands around the country, as part of the Wetland Bird Survey (WeBS). The Survey is vital in enabling conservationists to protect the most important places for waterbirds.

The table below shows the numbers of birds counted during the winter 2006/07 survey.

Volunteers have been doing WeBS counts at Paxton Pits through most of the winters since 1960, during which time the average winter count has increased six-fold from just a few hundred birds in the '60s to over 3000 birds since the turn of the millennium, although numbers were lower in 2006/07. It is telling that the month with the lowest count each winter since the mid 1990s is higher than any peak month in the 1960s. There are, of course, many more lakes than formerly, and with more quarrying planned, the waterbird counts may well go higher still.