Sharing Our Beaches With Birds

 We are a partner of The Northumberland Little Tern project and we've been  putting together some information in a leaflet on how to enjoy the beach responsibly. The hope is the leaflet will help visitors to our beautiful coast enjoy their time whilst also ensuring shorebirds have the room they need during the breeding season. There’s also a nifty shorebird I.D. guide to take with you on your walk. It's been part funded by EU LIFE+ as part of the national Little Tern Recovery Project.

The front cover of our free new leaflet. Photo of little tern by K . Simmonds

We are just putting the finishing  touches to it and will be officially launching it in the next few weeks so watch this space.

Hopefully we’ll be getting the leaflets into a whole host of places including Tourist information centers which will give visitors a chance to read them before they arrive. If you are local business or give information out  and are interested in pre-ordering some copies then please get in contact with the reserve office and we can sort out getting some to you.  

Shorebirds in the press again

Great to see fences for shorebirds going up further down the coast at Druridge Bay - it's getting to the time of the year where we'll be dusting off the electric fences and doing the same up here.

http://www.northumberlandgazette.co.uk/news/local-news/making-space-for-birds-on-northumberland-beach-1-7215062

Volunteers helped sort and store fencing from last year.

Almost that time of year again

Plenty of Sandwich terns around the NNR recently and we received news from the National Trust of a very early returning little tern that was seen on the Farne Islands.

It's not long now until now the breeding season is well and truly underway. Keep an eye on the blog for updates!

Update from the WoWL - Tuesday 7th of April

One of the Reserve's volunteers, Richard, regularly visits the Window on Wild Lindisfarne (WoWL for sort) to inform visitors to the building about the work of Natural England on the NNR and what we do to conserve the special habitats here. He has very kindly written about how his day at the WoWL went. 

" On Easter Tuesday I made my first visit of 2105 to WoWL. What a busy day with well over 200 people coming into the building. The telescope spent most of the time at it's lowest level - so many children visiting with it being holiday time. They do enjoy seeing the birds so close.

Redshank JJD (c)

What of the birds? Well the 13 black-tailed godwits were still there, with one in breeding plumage. A few black-headed and herring gulls sat around and there was a small group of teal on the scrape. As I was about to leave in the afternoon a large group of redshank flew in, together with a few oystercatchers. Feeding on the grass were starlings and meadow pipit. The highlight of the visit was a fly over of the field by a barn owl.

Kind regards

Richard "