Making friends, thanks and Shorebirds for Beginners events.

I began working for what we first called the Northumberland Coastal Mitigation Service just over two years. Sitting here two years later, our name “Space for Shorebirds” feels like a good choice. As Northumberland’s coastline becomes busier the need for birds to have their own space is becoming even more apparent.

In this time making friends has been incredibility important, it’s good when we go to Boulmer, Newbiggin and Beadnell for example we are recognised and people give us a wave and stop for a chat. We’ve been made to feel so welcome in those coastal communities by so many people, for this we are grateful, thank you all.

When we are the coast we enjoy meeting people and telling our shorebird stories, to help people to understand the pressures our birds face including disturbance. It’s been a good day when we’ve have had lots of conservations with residents and visitors alike.

We find the visitors to our coast are really interested in the wildlife that it supports. Often they have spotted things earlier that day but weren’t quite sure what it was. It’s a good feeling when we can help people put the name of a species against what they have seen, then we can tell those people a bit more about that species, where it fits in the story of the shore and how those birds live.

Wader identification can be quite intimidating, often you can only observe the birds from a distance, some are quite small and some can appear to be similar. Once the covid restrictions allowed we began our Shorebird for Beginners sessions – some bird watches, some guided walks. The idea of these sessions is to offer people with some interest in wildlife the chance to learn about the important birds with whom we share our coast. The friendly sessions are aimed at those with no prior knowledge of waders being required, this is in order to let the participants know that we are all learning about the birds together. No one can ever sensibly claim to know it all when it comes to wildlife.

Almost every session so far has been fully booked, we’ve had some great conversations, and lovely wildlife moments, an array of shorebirds in beautiful morning light. If you get a chance, do come along one day and join us for a few hours. You can now book onto these sessions here.

We aim to keep the groups small to encourage people to ask questions to create a two way conversation. Also we are happy to welcome our Dog Rangers along to the sessions too.

The format is a simple one, a welcome talk and then an introduction to Space for Shorebirds. It is then on with the walking and wader watching. We concentrate on trying to help people understand what good coastal wader habitat looks like, which species are present in those habitats and introduce the challenging problem of repeated disturbance.

We highlight feeding areas and the roosting areas, such as Longhoughton Steel where 500 curlew and 300 golden plover regularly roost. The latter was observed passing directly overhead, a real thrill for the new wader watchers seeing the goldies twinkle in the winter sun.

The participants might also see wracks of old seaweed, full of sandfly lava, and groups of turnstone and redshank feeding high on the beach on those areas.

On a recent session a skein of 300 pink footed geese passed high above, crying “wink-wink” as they went, all adding to the drama of a coastline that is full of life, contrasting with the image of being England’s most northerly county in the depths of winter.

Giving people access to good quality optics is also a joy, hearing someone exclaim when they first see a curlew in a telescope gives me a great feeling. Also it’s great to read the feedback for the sessions; “Absolutely lovely morning, really interesting, Richard and Katherine were both so kind and welcoming. Such an important thing to learn about our birds and how our actions walking along the coast can impact them”

Reaching people like this through engagement and education is crucial for Space for Shorebirds and more importantly our wonderful birds. What is absolutely clear is that Northumberland’s waders can only be protected, and Space for Shorebirds can only achieve its aims, by working postively with the residents of Northumberland.